


Tale of Two Cities

by TheFandomFilms



Series: I Want It All [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Blow Jobs, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Fluff, Gay Bucky Barnes, Happy Ending, M/M, Making Out, Mutual Pining, Porn With Plot, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Power Bottom Bucky, Pre serum Bucky, Smut, Top Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:00:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22328971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFandomFilms/pseuds/TheFandomFilms
Summary: Bucky branches out to finish school and make a name for himself as his career takes off. Steve is there to support him but is anxious when they have little time to see each other. Their time away from each other puts a lot of strain on the relationship and causes it to end in a nasty breakup. The pair seek to make amends with one another when both parties return to New York City for the time being.This work is a sequel to my other fic "Finish What You Started". If you have not read that fic, I strongly recommend it as this fic will not make sense without the story and context from the prequel fic.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: I Want It All [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1607137
Comments: 23
Kudos: 110





	1. Together Again

Steve’s mother always told him to find someone who would be his equal in every way.

“Don’t let yourself fall for someone who’ll put your world before theirs. Fall for the powerhouse who lives as fearlessly as you do. Find the person who makes you want to be a better man.”

Steve had definitely found his equal, the man who made his life a living hell and lived to antagonize him. A man whose mouth he wanted to tape shut...every bit as much as he wanted to kiss it.

His boyfriend, his former intern, Mister James (Bucky) Barnes.

At least, that’s how he used to see him, back when he was an idiot and blind to how hopelessly in love he was with him. Steve had most certainly found the person who made him want to be a better man; he had fallen for the fearless one. It just so happened that most days Steve was unable to get more than two minutes alone with Bucky.

His life: finally get the guy, never actually get to see him.

In short, Steve had been traveling for the better part of the last few months in search of office space for the Rogers Media Group branch they were setting up in Chicago and a few other locations. Bucky had left the company in order to finish school and get a higher degree. So basically, he was busy with school and Steve was practically never in town. While they had been engaged, their schedules rarely matched up and Steve kept waiting for it to feel like they were settled, or had established some solid routine. But it never happened. Steve was in a constant state of longing. Eventually, the strain and distance became too much and they decided to end the engagement and relationship all in one go. Admittedly, it was a pretty nasty breakup that caused the two to cut off all contact for the better part of a few months. It definitely took its toll on Steve, and he always wondered if Bucky felt the same. 

But Steve was finally back home, for good as of the time being. He had come back into town, without telling Bucky, as he knew his presence would distract Bucky from his big shot presentation for a higher position. To sum things up, the two had reconnected after the successful presentation and offer for the new position. 

It had been a few weeks since his initial return and Steve was finally settling back into his work routine. But due to Bucky's new job, they rarely saw each other in the workplace. It gnawed at his insides as he longed for any speck of time or contact he could get with the brunet. Hearing the familiar cadence of dress shoes clucking on the tile, Steve looked up from where he stood at the printer waiting for some documents to appear. As if hearing his inner plea, Bucky Barnes walked toward him, wearing black dress pants and a fitted navy sweater. When Steve had left early this morning to prepare for an eight o’clock meeting, the only thing the younger man had been wearing was a pale beam of light from the sunrise through the bedroom window.

Steve suppressed his smile and tried not to look too desperate, but he doesn’t know why he bothered. Bucky could read his every expression.

“I see you’ve found the magic machine that takes whatever is on your computer screen and puts it on paper,” he called. “In ink.”

Steve slid his hand into his pants pocket, jiggled some change there, and felt a trickle of adrenaline slip into his veins at Bucky's teasing tone and approach. “Actually, I discovered this wonderful contraption on my first day here. I just liked the moments of blissful quiet when I had made you get up and leave the outer office to retrieve my documents.”

He stalked toward the blond, his smile wide and eyes mischievous. “Asshole.”

“You’re in for a workout tonight,” he whispered as, without slowing his pace, Bucky patted his shoulder and continued past him down the hall.

Steve stared at Bucky's ass as he left and waited for the brunet to come back and torture him some more. He didn’t. That’s it? That’s all he gets? A pat on the shoulder and some verbal foreplay?

Still, tonight: their first full evening alone together in weeks.

They’d been in love for over a year—and fucking longer than that—and they’d yet to have more than the length of a weekend alone together since San Diego.

Steve sighed and pulled his papers from the printer tray. We needed a vacation.

Back in his office, Steve dropped the files on his desk and stared at his computer monitor, which, to his surprise, displayed a mostly empty calendar. Steve had pulled insanely long workdays the entire week before just so he could get home to Bucky early, so aside from Payroll grabbing him early this morning, his schedule had remained open. Bucky, however, was clearly busy in his new position.

Steve missed having Bucky as his intern. Steve missed bossing him around. He really missed Bucky bossing him around in return.

For the first time in months, Steve had time to sit in his office and literally do nothing. He closed his eyes and a hundred thoughts filtered past in mere seconds: the view of the empty Chicago offices just before Steve had left for the airport. The prospect of packing up his house. The far preferable prospect of unpacking in a new home with Bucky. And then his brain went down its favorite path: Bucky naked and in every conceivable position.

Which led back to one of his favorite memories of Bucky and him: the morning after Bucky's presentation. Due to the heat and tension that came with actually admitting they were no longer hate-fucking but actually interested in something more, they had had one of their biggest arguments ever. Steve hadn’t seen Bucky's in months, so he showed up at the brunet’s presentation for the scholarship board to watch Bucky nail it. And he did.

Afterward, though, despite everything they’d said upstairs in the boardroom, there was still so much more to say. The reality of their reunion still felt so new, and Steve hadn’t been sure where they stood.

Once they were on the sidewalk, Steve stared down at him: at his eyes, and lips and Bucky's neck, which was still a little red from the biting kisses the blond had placed there only minutes before. The way Bucky reached up and rubbed his finger over what appeared to be a small hickey pushed an electric reminder from Steve’s brain to his cock: this reunion is nice but it’s time to get Bucky home and fuck him into the mattress.

Steve wasn’t sure they were on the same page about that, though.

Outside in the daylight, the younger man looked like he was about to fall over. Of course, he was. Knowing Bucky, he’d probably been preparing and fine-tuning his presentation for the last seventy-two hours straight, no sleep. But Steve hadn’t seen Bucky in so long—could Steve keep it together long enough to just let him go home to rest? If he needed to nap, Steve could just hang out and wait for him to wake up, right? He could lie down near Bucky, reassure himself that he was really here and they were really doing this and just...what? Touch Bucky's hair?

Holy shit. Had Steve always been this creepy?

Bucky hitched his computer bag up over his shoulder, and the movement pulled him out of his thoughts. But when Steve blinked back into focus, he saw that Bucky was staring off into the distance, toward the river.

“You okay?” Steve asked, ducking to meet Bucky's icy eyes.

He nodded, startling a little as if he’d been caught. “I’m fine, just overwhelmed.”

“A little shell-shocked?”

The brunet’s exhausted smile pulled at something tender beneath Steve’s ribs, but the way he licked his lips before speaking tugged inside the blond a bit lower. “I was so sad thinking I wasn’t going to see you today. And this morning, I spent the entire walk between your building and here thinking how weird it was that I was going to be doing this without you, or Darcy, or anyone from Rogers Media. And then you came here, and of course, you pissed me off, but you also made me laugh...” Bucky tilted his head, studied Steve’s face. “The presentation was exactly what I wanted it to be, and then the job offers...and you. You told me you love me. You’re here.”

Bucky reached out to press his palm flat to Steve’s chest. Steve knew he could feel his heart slamming against his sternum. “My adrenaline is slowing and now I’m just...” He moved his hand away from him and waved it in front of himself before it seemed to deflate at Bucky's side. “I’m not sure how tonight is going to work.”

How tonight was going to work? Steve could tell Bucky exactly how it would work. They’d talk until it was dark, and then fuck until the sun came up. Steve reached for him, slipping his arm around Bucky's shoulder. Christ, he felt good.

“Let me worry about all of that. I’ll drive you home.”

This time he shook his head, pulling more fully back into the moment. “It’s okay if you have to go back to work, they can—”

Scowling, Steve growled, “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s almost four. I’m not going back to work. My car is here and you’re getting in it.”

The brunet’s smile turned sharp at the corners. “Bossy Steve emerges. Now I’m definitely not going with you.”

“Bucky, I’m not kidding. I’m not letting you out of my sight until Christmas.”

Bucky squinted up at the late afternoon June sun. “Christmas? That sounds a little gimp-in-the-basement for my tastes.”

“If you’re not into that, this relationship might not work after all,” Steve teased.

He laughed but didn’t answer. Instead, those deep grey eyes stared up at Steve, unblinking and hard to read.

Steve felt so out of practice with this and struggled to hide his frustration.

Placing his hands on Bucky's hips, Steve bent to press a small kiss to the center of his mouth. Fuck, Steve needed more. “Let’s go. No basements. Just us.”

“Steve—”

Steve cut him off with another kiss, paradoxically relaxed by this tiny disagreement. “My car. Now.”

“You sure you don’t want to hear what I have to say?”

“Absolutely positive. You can talk all you want once I have your dick in my mouth.”

Bucky nodded and followed when Steve took his hand and gently pulled him toward the parking deck, but he was smiling mysteriously all the while.

The entire drive to Bucky's place, he tickled his fingers up and down Steve’s thigh, leaned to lick his neck, and slid his hand over Steve’s cock, being as teasing as ever.

Steve leaned to kiss him at a red light. The car behind them honked just when it was getting good: when Bucky's lips were giving way to tiny bites and his sounds filled the blond’s mouth and his head and—fuck—his entire chest. Steve needed to get him naked and beneath him

In the elevator on the way up to Bucky's apartment, it was wild. He was here, holy fuck he was here, and Steve had missed him so much; if Steve had his way, this night was going to last for three days. He pushed the younger man up against the nearest wall and pressed his aching cock into him.

“Going to make you come so many times,” Steve promised.

“Mmm, promise?”

“Promise.”

Steve rocked his hips against Bucky's and he gasped when their erections pressed together more firmly, whispering, “Okay, but first—”

The elevator dinged and he wiggled himself free and walked ahead of the blond into the hallway and toward his apartment.

His stomach dropped.

Steve hadn’t been back here since they were apart and he had conned Bucky's security guard into letting him up to talk to him. Steve had ended up spending the entire time conversing with the outside of Bucky's door instead. Steve felt strangely anxious. Steve wanted to only feel relieved at their reunion, not think about everything they’d missed out on in their months apart. To distract himself, Steve bent down and sucked at the skin beneath Bucky's ear and began working on the buckle of the brunet’s belt as he fumbled with his key.

He swung the door open, turning to the blond. “Steve—” he started, but Steve pushed him inside and back against the nearest wall, quieting Bucky's with his mouth. Fuck, he tasted good, a mix of the flavored water he’d been drinking and that familiar taste he always had: masculine and earthy with softer, hungry lips. Steve’s fingers teased the hem of the brunet’s sweater. Why the fuck is he still wearing this goddamn thing? Why is he still wearing anything? He quickly tugged off the garment and dropped it to the floor.

Beneath the dress shirt, Bucky's nipples hardened as Steve stared, and he reached out to circle one with a fingertip. Bucky's sharp gasp pulled his eyes to his.

“I missed this. I missed you.”

Bucky’s tongue peeked out to wet his lips. “Me, too.”

“Fuck, I love you.”

When Steve kissed Bucky's throat, Bucky's chest lifted and fell with quickened breaths, and he wasn’t sure how this was going to go down, how he could possibly slow down. Would Steve take Bucky here, fast and hard first, or would he carry the younger man to a couch or chair, kneel down, and just taste him? Steve had been thinking about all of it for so long—playing out in his head how every scenario would go—and in the moment Steve felt a little paralyzed by the reality of Bucky being here, in the flesh.

Steve needed it all. He needed to feel Bucky's sounds and his skin, lose himself in the comfort of the brunet’s hand wrapped around him, watch the sweat bead on Bucky's brow while he rode Steve, showing him how much he’d missed the blond, too. He had seen it in the way Bucky's rhythm would falter when he got closer, or he would clutch him when Steve would say Bucky's name in that quiet whisper he always liked.

His hands shook as Steve reached up and carefully slipped Bucky's top button free. It registered somewhere in the ever-shrinking evolved portion of his brain that Steve didn’t want to destroy the buttons on the shirt Bucky had worn for his thesis defense.

Steve also wanted to savor this. Savor him.

“Steve?”

“Mmm?” Steve undid another button, ran a finger across the hollow of Bucky's throat.

“I love you,” he said, his hands braced on Steve’s forearms, eyes wide. His hands faltered, and Steve lost his breath. “But...you’re going to hate what I’m about to tell you.”

Steve was still stuck on the ‘I love you’. His grin felt a little out of control. “What...? Whatever you have to say, I’m sure I won’t hate it.”

Bucky winced, turning to look at the clock on the wall. It was the first time it occurred to him to take a look around Bucky's apartment. Steve stepped back in surprise; Bucky's place looked nothing like he expected.

Everything about Bucky had always been masculine, clean, current. But his apartment did not exactly match that description. The living room was tidy but full of worn furniture and things that didn’t look like anything he would own. Everything was brown and tan; the couches looked comfortable but like they were made out of the same material that teddy bears were made out of. The flooring was a dark wood that accented the white carpet under the coffee table. The lamps on the corner tables were rustic and cast a warm glow over the space. The living room opened up to a stylish and clean kitchen on the right and a hallway to lead to the master bedroom off the left side. There was a two-sided bookshelf between the length of the hallway and the wall of the living room. The far wall stretched the expanse of the kitchen and living room and was made up of floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the cityscape.

“This...is not what I expected.”

Bucky followed his attention around the apartment and then let a loud laugh burst free. It was the same laugh he used to let out before he would verbally eviscerate Steve. “What would you have expected, Mr. Rogers?”

He shrugged, “I just expected your place to look a little more like you.”

“What, you don’t like my owls?” he asked, grinning. Steve’s eyes settled on a pair of carved wooden owls on the table below the large flat-screen TV.

“I do, yes, they just—” Steve started, running a nervous hand into his hair.

“And these couches?” he interrupted. “Don’t you think we could have fun on them?”

“Baby, we could have fun on any surface in this place, I’m just saying I expected your place to be less...”

Fuck. Why was he still talking? Steve looked over at him and he had a hand over his mouth, laughing silently.

“Calm down,” he said. “This was my mom’s apartment. I love it, but you’re right. None of this stuff is mine. When I was in school it just didn’t make sense for me to sell much of it, or to get a lot of new things.”

This place technically could be passed off as Bucky’s, that is, if Bucky was a hippie. The blond looked back to Bucky, leaning against the wall still. His eyes traveled down to the brunet’s clothing strewn on the floor.

With this perfect reminder, he stepped close to him, resuming his gentle attack on Bucky’s line of buttons. Pushing his shirt over his shoulders and down his arms, Steve stared at where he stood in front of him.

“Tell me what you want,” Steve said, feeling a little desperate as he leaned in so he could suck on the younger man’s neck, his jaw, his ear. “My cock? My mouth? My hands? Christ, I’m doing it all tonight but where does one start? I haven’t seen you in months and feel like I’m losing my mind.”

Steve reached for his arm, urging him closer. “Baby, put your hands on me.”

Bucky ran his hands up his neck and cupped his face. Steve could feel him shaking. “Steve.”

Only when he said his name like this—like he was shy and maybe even anxious—did Steve remember he said he had something to tell him other than ‘I love you’. Something Steve wouldn’t like.

“What is it?”

Bucky’s eyes were enormous, searching Steve’s and full of apology. “I just finished my defense, and—”

“Oh, shit. I’m such an ass. I should take you to dinner or—”

“—and I promised Nat that we would go out—”

“—maybe we could get some dinner after I make you come—” Steve barreled on.

“—for drinks after my presentation—”

“I just need to hear you come once and then we can go. Just give me...” He stopped, finally letting his words settle in.

Bucky nodded, eyes tight. “I didn’t know you’d be here. I can’t tell you how much I want to call and cancel. But the thing is, I can’t. Not after how good she has been to me the last few months...when you and I were...”

The blond groaned, pressing the heel of his hands to his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me this before I started taking your clothes off? Holy shit, how am I supposed to let you go now? I’m going to be hard for hours.”

“I tried to tell you.” To his credit, he looked as frustrated as Steve felt.

“Do we have time to....” Steve shook his head, looking around as if the answer were buried somewhere in this ancient furniture. “I could probably get us both off in, like, two minutes.”

Bucky laughed. “I’m not sure that’s something to brag about.”

The hell it wasn’t.

Bucky’s small gasp of surprise was stolen by Steve’s lips as he kissed him, tongue and teeth and not even caring if they only had a few minutes. He could do a few minutes.

He slid his hand over the racing pulse in the younger man’s throat, down his sternum and lower, down the front of his stomach. He moved lower still, finding that familiar, favorite place where he was warm and hard, and the roof could fall in and Steve wouldn’t even notice because, God, nothing existed but Bucky and his little sounds and quiet whispers to keep going, keep going. His fingers trailed up to the brunet’s belt buckle and swiftly undid it.

“Steve,” he whispered. “Please.”

Steve reached down for his own pants, and had just started to speak—

And was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door.

A familiar voice floated into his entryway. “I’m here, Mister Serious Business Graduate, and I’m ready for the drinking!”

“This is a joke. Tell me this is a joke,” Steve said, glaring at him.

He shook his head, biting back a smile.

“I am in no mood to share right now. You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“I forget how much I love seeing you angry.”

Bucky walked to the door and opened it a crack before turning and sprinting into his bedroom, leaving Steve to greet the intruder.

What in the actual fuck.

“I’ll be out in a few!” Bucky yelled over his shoulder, disappearing into a bedroom down the hall.

“Wow, I didn’t expect you to answer the door in your underwear, Bucky.” Natasha walked in with her hands over her eyes, reaching out blindly. She grabbed a handful of Steve’s half-unbuttoned shirt and shrieked when she uncovered her eyes and saw that it was Steve she was holding on to. “Mr. Rogers!”

“Hello, there,” Steve said, voice flat. He straightened his shirt, pulled his tie back into place.

“Oh boy, did I interrupt something?” Nat asked, eyes wide and teasing.

“Yes, in fact. We were...becoming reacquainted.”

Bucky called out from one of the bedrooms down the hall to help ourselves to the champagne in the fridge, and Steve tried to ignore the way her eyes dropped to his zipper. The blond stood still, letting her take a good long look. His erection was gone anyway.

Mostly.

“I didn’t realize it was to be a friends’ night out,” Steve said when the silence felt like it had dragged on forever.

She stepped back, her eyes seeming to struggle to stay above Steve’s shoulders, and explained, “I don’t think any of us expected you to be here and...want a night in.”

Steve most definitely wanted a night in. In every part of Bucky.

Steve turned, moving into the kitchen to wash his hands. Natasha followed, and behind him, Steve heard the open the bottle of champagne, the squeak and pop and then the quiet fizz reminding him how much he’d rather be opening that bottle over Bucky’s naked body, and licking the foamy bubbles from his skin.

Nat continued, “But I think we should all go out to celebrate, and he can have as much of his as he wants.” She poured three flutes of champagne and then handed one to the blond. “You’ll just have to wait until later to...reacquaint.”

Bucky emerged from his room in black jeans and a blue t-shirt that made his skin look golden.

No way in hell would Steve be able to keep his hands off the brunet if he wore that out.

“Bucky,” he started, walking over to him and setting his champagne down on the kitchen counter with a shaking hand. Steve scowled at his freshly styled hair, it was fluffy and no longer rumpled from their earlier make out session.

His eyes sparkled with amusement and he stretched to reach Steve’s ear so only he could hear. “You can mess it up later.”

“You should count on it.”

“Do you want to grab it? Pull it?” Bucky asked, kissing the shell of his ear. The blond nodded, eyes closing.

Steve reached for his champagne with a shaky hand, downed it. “Let’s go with yes.”

Need coiled low in his stomach and he was torn between wanting to smash something and wanting to drag Bucky back into his bedroom and peel those jeans down his legs. Absolutely no part of him felt like spending an evening drinking wine and eating cheese and listening to Bucky and Nat talk. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep it together.

As if reading his mind, Bucky whispered, “It’ll just make it better when we get home.”

“I doubt that is even possible.”

His fingers lightly scratched over the blond’s chest. “I’ve missed that surly face.”

Ignoring him, Steve asked, “How about you come to my place later? Go out with her, enjoy this night. I’ll be there when you’re ready.”

The brunet stretched and slid a slow, warm kiss across his mouth. “What happened to not letting me out of your sight until Christmas?”

He’d expected a dance club, maybe something fancy with twenty-dollar drinks and miles of twenty-something coeds in tiny black dresses. What Steve hadn’t expected was a low-key bar in the suburbs, with darts and what Natasha called “the best sampling of beer in Queens.”

As long as they could make Steve a vodka gimlet and he could be in constant physical contact with Bucky, the night might not be too much of a disaster. He followed them inside, shooting daggers at every leering douchebag in the place as they made their way up to the bar. Natasha plopped herself down on a worn leather stool, shouting something to the bartender about the usual for her and Bucky as well as something pink for the pretty boy.

On second thought, this was going to be a long night.

Nat sat on the other side of Bucky as he told her about Clarence Cheng, about how Steve had barged in there and been an asshole, how he’d presented both projects, and even been offered a job.

“Two jobs,” Steve clarified, staring the brunet down so he knew Steve was thinking he’d better damn well fucking take the job at Rogers Media Group.

Bucky rolled his eyes but none of them could miss his proud smile. With their beers and Steve’s pink Cosmo raised in the air, they toasted Bucky on a job well done.

Beside Steve, Bucky downed his beer and then wiggled off his seat. “Who’s up for some darts?”

Nat raised her hand and jumped a little before standing. Steve slid his gaze down the length of Bucky’s body. He rather liked the idea of watching the younger man stretching and moving to play darts.

“You coming?” he asked, leaning down and resting his hand on the blond’s inner thigh.

Fucking tease.

“Hoping to, very soon.” Steve let his eyes linger on his mouth before dropping to his shoulders and rest of his upper body.

Bucky’s laugh brought his attention back to his lips and he pushed them together in a playful pout. “Is Steve a little keyed up?”

“Steve is a lot keyed up,” He said, pulling Bucky between his legs and kissing the curve of his ear. He wanted to be patient and let the brunet enjoy this night, but patience had never really been his strong suit. “Steve wants Bucky naked and touching his cock.”

With a chuckle, he slipped away and to the back of the bar to join Nat and a few others at the dartboard.

It wasn’t long before Natasha returned to get another drink for herself and Bucky. She put her hand on Steve’s shoulder, glancing quickly behind them to make sure Bucky was out of earshot. “You did good.”

Steve was uncomfortable discussing personal issues with all but a few people in my life, and this most personal of all conversations was the last thing he wanted to have.

Ignoring this, the blond lifted his fruity girl drink and drained it.

“He’s so happy tonight,” Nat murmured, almost to herself.

“He’s thin.” Steve glanced at where he stood, poised and ready to throw a dart. Bucky did seem happy, and for that he was thrilled, but the difference in his body was also hard for Steve to ignore. “Too thin.”

Nodding, Natasha said, “He exercised too much, worked too much.” Her eyes searched Steve’s for a beat before she added, “It wasn’t good, Steve. He was a wreck.”

“So was I.”

Natasha acknowledged this with a teasing smile. The sadness was in the past, after all. “So if you’re going to keep him in bed for the next few days, just make sure you give him breaks to eat.”

Steve nodded, moving his eyes to the back of the room, where Bucky spun a couple of times, took aim, and then barely hit the dartboard. He and the group around him broke into laughter, pausing only to say something that then made them laugh harder.

And while he played and danced to the Rolling Stones, Steve felt the weight of his love for the brunet settle into a heavy warmth in his stomach. Two months apart was nothing in the grand scheme of what they had ahead of them, but in their shared history it felt enormous. Steve wanted to dwarf it with time spent together.

Steve needed to get back, get closer. He waved to the bartender, mouthing, “Check,” when she looked at him.

Natasha stopped Steve with a warning hand on his arm. “Don’t fuck it up. He’s independent, and he’s been doing it on his own for so long he’ll never be the guy to tell you how much he needs you. But he’ll show you how much he wants this. Bucky is about action, not words. I’ve known him since we were twelve, and you’re it for him.”

Two arms slipped around Steve’s waist from behind, and Bucky pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades. “What are we talking about over here?”

“Football,” Nat said just as Steve answered, “Politics.”

The blond felt him laugh and he slid under his arm, wrapping himself around him. “So you were talking about me.”

“Yes,” they both answered.

“And what a mess I was and how happy I look tonight, and how Steve better not fuck it up this time.”

Nat glanced at Steve, punting that one in his direction as she lifted her beer, raised it in a silent toast, and then left them alone at the end of the bar.

Bucky turned his blue eyes on him. “Did she tell you all of my secrets?”

“Hardly.” Steve set his drink down and wrapped his arm around the younger man. “Can we go now? I’ve been away from you for too long and I’m reaching the limit on how much sharing I’m willing to tolerate. I want you alone.”

He felt Bucky laugh as a shaking of his body in his arm, and then the quiet sound made it to his ears. “You’re so demanding.”

“I’m just telling you what I want.”

“Fine then. Be specific. What do you really want?”

“I want you on your knees on my bed. I want you sweaty and begging. I want you hard and aching.”

“Shit,” Bucky whispered, his voice strung tight. “I’m already there.”

“Then damn, Barnes. Get the fuck in my car.”


	2. Like Old Times

With Steve's hands on the steering wheel and Bucky’s hands everywhere else—his thighs, Steve's cock, his neck, his chest—Steve wasn’t even sure they would make it home safely.

Especially not once he lifted Steve's right arm so he could duck down and unzip Steve's pants, pull his cock from his boxers, and drag his tongue up its length. Steve wanted to get him home, but fuck, this would do just as well.

“Oh, God,” he whispered, before taking all of Steve in his mouth.

“Holy fuck,” the blond mumbled, moving into the slow lane of traffic.

It was so perfect, all over again: his hands and mouth working in tandem, tiny moans vibrating against Steve and sounding to all the world as if he’d never wanted anything as much as he’d wanted to feel Steve like this. Bucky started slow, long pulls and tiny teasing licks, looking up at him through dark lashes until Steve thought he might lose his mind. But he read the blond like he always did, knowing when not to stop, when to move faster or rougher, squeezing Steve's base tightly. What sent him reeling was Bucky’s own excitement; his eyes grew dark, pleading, his breath grew labored, and his sounds around Steve grew more frantic. Too soon, the blond was gripping the steering wheel, panting and begging, and, finally, cursing loudly as he came in his mouth.

He had no idea how he managed to steer the car onto Steve's street, or pull it into his driveway, but with shaky hands, somehow he got them there. The younger man kissed Steve's navel, and then rested his forehead against his thigh and the car grew completely silent. It wasn’t exactly how he imagined being with Bucky again for the first time, but the way it was so hurried and spontaneous...that felt like them, too.

When he pushed against Steve's arm so he could sit up, Steve shifted in his seat, reaching to zip his pants and fasten his belt.

“What the hell?” Bucky asked, looking out the window. His surprised tone burst through Steve's sex haze. “Is this your house? Why are we here?”

“You wanted to go to your place?”

Shrugging, he said, “I just assumed we would. I don’t have any of my things here.”

“I don’t have anything at your place, either.”

“But I have spare toothbrushes. Do you have spare toothbrushes?”

What the fuck is he talking about?

“You can use mine. What the fuck?”

Sighing, Bucky opened his door and mumbled, “Such a man.”

“To be clear,” Steve said, getting out of the car and following him up the walkway, “I brought you here because this is where I was going to bring you after San Diego. I was going to tie you to my headboard and spank the fuck out of you. And I intend that again, after everything you put me through.”

Bucky stopped where he stood on Steve's porch, his back to him for several long, confusing seconds before he turned to stare at the blond. “What did you just say?”

“Did I stutter?” Steve asked, and when the brunet just continued to stare, he explained, “Yes, we were apart because I was a jerk. But so were you.”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed and grew dark. Steve was half scared, and half thrilled as fuck that the brunet was about to blow up at him. Bucky backed him to the front door, his fist curling tight around Steve's tie before he yanked, pulling him so their faces were closer. His dark eyes were wild and wide. “Give me your keys.”

Reaching into Steve's pocket, he pulled them out, depositing them in Bucky’s waiting palm without question.

Steve watched as he flipped through them and actually found the right key on the first guess. “It’s the top lock and the—”

He cut Steve off with a fingertip to his lips. “Shh. No talking.”

The blond tried to puzzle out what was happening. Obviously he hadn’t expected Steve to tease him about leaving the brunet the way he did. Maybe Bucky suspected they’d left all of that discussion in the conference room where they reunited. And Steve supposed in many ways they had. He didn’t need Bucky to apologize, and he didn’t feel like he needed to apologize anymore. But their separation had been a shitty few months, so it didn’t feel like the conversation about it was entirely over. Besides, spanking Bucky seemed like the most appropriate way to work it all out of their systems.

The brunet’s hand didn’t fumble behind Steve as he slipped the key into the lock. He heard the familiar squeak and click, then he pushed the door open and backed him over the threshold.

“Straight back to my living room,” he offered. “Or down the hall to my bed.”

Steve could sense him steering him to the living room, his eyes moving between Steve's face, his hand on his tie, and the house behind him. It was, after all, the first time he was seeing Steve's home.

“It’s nice,” Bucky whispered, seeming to decide what he was doing with Steve as he pulled him up short. “It’s so clean. It’s so...you.”

“Thank you,” the blond said, laughing. “I think.”

As if remembering that Bucky was punishing him for something, he threw Steve a stern look. “Stay here.”

He left and although Steve was tempted to see what he was up to, he followed his instructions. After only a few seconds he returned with one of Steve's high-backed dining room chairs. Once he had it situated behind the blond, he pressed on Steve's shoulders to urge him to sit down.

Turning, Bucky walked over to Steve's sound system, picked up the remote, and scanned the buttons.

“First turn on the—”

“Shh.” Without turning, Bucky held up a single hand to quiet him.

Steve closed his mouth, jaw tense. He was stretching Steve's patience a little. If he hadn’t indicated that the blond was supposed to stay seated, and he didn’t suspect the brunet wanted to play, Steve would have had him flat on his stomach by then and already yanked his ass in the air for a spanking.

After only a few moments, a smooth, pulsing rhythm slid into the room with a woman’s husky voice layered on top. Bucky hesitated at the stereo, shoulders moving with his deep, nervous breaths.

“Baby, come here,” Steve whispered, hoping he heard him over the music.

The younger man turned, returning to him and standing so close that his thighs pressed against Steve's knees. Steve's face was at his stomach level, and he couldn’t help but lean forward, kiss his navel through his shirt. But Bucky’s hands came up and pushed Steve's shoulders back so that he was again sitting up straight.

He followed Steve's body, moving to straddle his lap. With both hands, he reached forward and toyed with Steve's tie.

“What you said outside...,” he whispered. “Maybe we do need to talk some more.”

“Okay.”

“But if you don’t want to do it now, we can go to your room and you can do everything you want to me.” He lifted his gaze to Steve's face, dark eyes searching. “We can talk later.”

“I’ll talk about anything you want.” the blond swallowed and smiled up at him. “Then I’ll take you to my bed and do everything I want.”

Steve could hardly catch his breath. He reached up to undo the top button of his shirt, but Bucky caught Steve's hand and pulled it down, his eyebrow raised in silent question.

Slowly, he undid Steve's tie until it was wrapped around his fist like a boxer’s tape. The blond was so turned on by this power in him that when he moved Steve's hands to the side of the chair, he didn’t really notice. Steve's cock grew uncomfortably hard, and he shifted his hips to adjust the angle in his pants, his heart pounding beneath his ribs. What the fuck was Bucky going to do?

“Tell me you love me,” he whispered.

Steve's heart was racing and his blood seemed to pound through his veins. “I love you. Wildly. I’m...” He’d imagined this a thousand different times, but this moment felt way too loaded and Steve's words came out in a breathless rush. Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, he murmured, “I’m wildly in love with you.”

“But you were mad at me when I left.”

Steve’s stomach tightened. Was this going to turn into a fight? And would that be a good or a bad thing?

Bucky leaned forward, kissed Steve's chin, his lips, his cheek. He slid his mouth to Steve's ear.

And then Steve felt a tug around his wrists; the brunet had bound his hands behind the chair with Steve's tie. “It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry. I just want to talk about it.”

Bucky wanted to talk about it, wanted to feel comfortable hearing how it had affected the blond, how he’d been angry. But he needed Steve tied up first? He smiled, turning to catch his lips in a kiss.

“Yes, I was mad at you. I was mostly heartbroken, but I was angry, too.”

“Tell me why you were mad.” Bucky mouth moved farther away from his, to Steve's neck, and he sucked along his skin while the blond considered how to answer.

It felt like their breakup had happened a million years ago, but also like it happened only earlier today. The fact that he was here, straddling Steve's lap and kissing him, reminded him that this was in many ways ancient history. But the way Steve's chest twisted at the memory of Bucky leaving him...it felt too close.

“You never let me explain, or apologize. I called. I went over to your place. I would have done anything to work it out.”

Bucky didn’t say anything, didn’t try to defend himself. Instead, running his fingers into Steve's hair and pulling his face against his chest.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy to transition from hate-fucking to being in love,” Steve said into the soft fabric of his top. “And the first time I messed up you left me.”

Bucky slipped the top button free on his jeans, slowly pulled the zipper down, and then peeled them off his legs. In a few more seconds, his shirt joined his jeans on the floor. The brunet stood before him, completely naked but for his black briefs. In the shadowed room, his skin looked like silk.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

“I’d only realized that I loved you, that maybe I had been in love with you for a while, and then suddenly you were gone.” Steve looked up at him, hoping he hadn’t gone too far.

He slid over Steve's lap, and he wanted more than anything to have his hands free to run up the brunet’s strong thighs. Instead, he stared at where his legs parted over him, just a few inches away from Steve's cock.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Steve blinked up in surprise. “I wouldn’t change it, because I did what I needed to do at the time. But I know it hurt you, and I know it wasn’t fair to just shut you out.”

Steve nodded, tilting his chin so he would come closer and kiss him. Bucky’s mouth pressed to his, soft and wet, and a tiny sigh escaped his lips.

“Thank you for coming this morning,” he said against him.

“Would you have come to me?” Steve asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning. After I’d finished my presentation. I’d decided that about a week ago.”

Steve groaned, leaning forward to kiss him. Bucky arched away so instead, he kissed his chin, and down his throat.

“Did you see anyone else while we were apart?”

Steve stopped and gaped up at him. “What—is that a serious question? No.”

A smile spread across his face. “I just needed to hear it.”

“If you let another person touch you, Bucky I swear to God, I—”

“Settle down, Rogers.” He pressed two fingertips to Steve's mouth. “I didn’t.”

Steve closed his eyes, kissing the younger man’s fingers and nodding. The offending image evaporated slowly from his mind, but his heart didn’t seem to slow even a touch.

The blond felt breath on his neck just a beat before Bucky asked, “Did you think about me?”

“Several times every minute.”

“Did you ever think about fucking me?”

All words slipped from his head. Every word in the English language disappeared and he shifted under Bucky, wanting him so intensely in this vulnerable and open and quiet moment that he feared he would lose it the second Bucky freed Steve from his pants.

“Not at first,” Steve managed, finally. “But after a few weeks, I tried.”

“Tried to touch yourself and think of me? Like your hand could stand in for me?”

He watched Bucky’s expression grow from curious to predatory before he answered, “Yeah.”

“Did you come?”

“Jesus, Bucky.” How was it so hot to be grilled by him like this?

Bucky didn’t blink or fidget at all while waiting for him to answer. He simply stared him down. “Tell me.”

Steve couldn’t fight his smile. Always such a ballbuster. “A couple of times. It wasn’t very pleasurable because you would come into my head and it was just as frustrating as it was relieving.”

“For me, too,” Bucky said. “I missed you so much it hurt. At work I missed you. At home, in my bed, I could barely stand it. The only time I could clear you from my head was when I was—”

“Running,” Steve whispered. “I can tell. You lost too much weight.”

The younger man’s eyebrow lifted. “So did you.”

“I also drank too much,” The blond admitted, reminding him that this wasn’t a contest. He didn’t need to prove he’d fared better. Steve was actually pretty sure he had. “The first month we were apart is still kind of a blur.”

“Nat told me how you looked. She told me I wasn’t being fair by staying away from you.”

Steve’s eyebrows inched up in surprise. Really? Natasha had said that? “You did what you needed to do.”

Leaning back, the brunet looked down the length of Steve’s torso, and then up to his eyes. He was curious to see that Bucky looked a little surprised. Maybe even giddy. “You let me tie you up.”

Steve stared up at him. “Of course I did.”

“I just wasn’t sure you’d let me. I thought I’d tricked you—I thought you might say no.”

“Bucky, you’ve owned me since the first second I saw you. I’d have let you tie me up back in the conference room if you’d asked.”

A tiny smile pulled at one side of his mouth. “I wouldn’t have let you if you’d asked.”

“Good.” Steve leaned in for a kiss. “You’re smarter than I am.”

“I think we’ve both always known that’s true.” He murmured as his hand came to Steve’s chest before dragging down.

The way Steve wanted him was a kind of steady, heavy ache. He was so hard he could feel his every heartbeat through his cock, but he also felt like his vision was oversaturated with color: the red of the younger man’s flush and lips, the blue of his eyes, the creamy ivory of his skin. Steve’s body was screaming for his to take him inside, but his brain couldn’t stop drinking in each detail. “Let me feel you.” He could also feel and see Bucky straining in his briefs, aching to touch.

Without warning, he stood and stepped away, turning his back to Steve and looking over his shoulder with a mischievous smile on his face.

“What are you doing, little devil?” The blond panted.

He began to hook his thumbs under the waistband of his briefs. If Bucky so much as thought he was going to tease Steve any longer or touch himself without letting the blond do so as well...

No. No way in hell.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Steve said, yanking his hands free from the flimsy knot and standing to tower over the brunet like a storm cloud forming in his own living room. “Go down the hall and get on my bed. If you even think of taking off those, I will take care of myself and you’ll lie there and watch me come.”

Bucky’s eyes widened into enormous pools of black in the dark room, and without another word, he turned and sprinted down the hall to the bedroom.

And with that memory in mind, Steve’s day was officially shot. That night had been the single most intimate night of his life and had launched their relationship from Giving It a Try into Fully Committed. Steve would never get over the way he turned his vulnerability into quiet command, or the way Bucky let him turn the tables in his bedroom, tie him to the bed and nibble at every inch of his body.

The blond groaned as he realized he had no idea when they would ever have such a lazy night together again, and picked up his phone.

‘Lunch?’ He texted.

‘Can’t’, Bucky replied. ‘Meeting with Douglas from noon to three. Shoot me.’

Steve looked at the clock. It was 11:26. He slid his phone back on his desk and returned to the article he was working on for the Journal. He was useless and I knew it.

After about two minutes, Steve picked up his phone, texting Bucky again, this time using their secret code.

‘Bat signal.’

The brunet replied immediately: ‘On my way.’

The outer door opened and closed, bringing the sound of Bucky’s shoes moving across the floor of the office just outside Steve’s. It had once been Bucky’s, but when he’d returned to Rogers Media Group after finishing his MBA, he moved to an office of his own in the east wing. End result: the outer office now remained empty. Steve had attempted working with a few different assistants, but they never really worked out. Andrea cried all the time. Jesse tapped her pen on her desk and the effect was much like a woodpecker going at a tree. Bruce couldn’t type.

Apparently Bucky was more of a saint for “putting up with Steve” than he’d given him credit for.

The door opened and he stepped through, brows drawn together. They used the bat signal primarily to notify each other of work crises, and for a moment Steve wondered whether he was overreacting.

“What happened?” the brunet asked, stopping about a foot away from him, his arms crossed over his chest. Steve could see he was preparing for a professional battle on his behalf, but he wanted him to fight a far more personal one.

“Nothing work related,” Steve said, rubbing his jaw. “I...”

The blond drifted off, staring at each part of his face in turn: his eyes as they narrowed in concentration, the full lips he’d pulled together in concern, his smooth skin. And, of course, I let my eyes drop to the rest of his form well, fuck.

“Where are you looking?”

“Uhh...”

“You sent me the bat signal so you could look at me?”

“Settle down, Barnes. I sent you the bat signal because I miss you.”

His arms fell to his sides and seemed to stutter, fingers fumbling with the buttons on his dress shirt. “How can you miss me? I stayed over last night.”

“I know.” Steve knew this side of him. Forever knee-jerking back to self-preservation.

“And we had all weekend together.”

“Yeah, you and me—and Hope and Scott,” Steve reminded him. “And Henry and Mina. Not alone. Not nearly as much as we’d anticipated.”

Bucky turned his head and looked out the window. For the first time in weeks they had a perfect, sunny day, and he wanted to take the brunet outside and just...sit.

“I feel like I miss you all the time lately,” he whispered.

The knot in Steve’s chest unwound a bit. “Do you?”

Nodding, the younger man turned back to him. “Your travel schedule sucks right now.” he leaned forward, cocked an eyebrow. “And you didn’t kiss me goodbye this morning.”

“I did, in fact,” Steve said, smiling. “You were still sleeping.”

“Doesn’t count.”

“Are you looking for a fight, Mister Barnes?”

He shrugged, struggling to repress a smile as he studied Steve carefully.

“We could skip the fight and you could just suck on my dick for ten minutes or so.”

Without another beat passing, he stepped close and slid his arms around the blond, stretching to press his face into his neck. “I love you,” he whispered. “And I love that you sent the bat signal just because you missed me.”

Steve was struck silent, for probably too long, and he finally managed to croak out an “I love you, too.”

It wasn’t that Bucky wasn’t expressive; he was. When they were alone, he was—physically—the most expressive person Steve had ever known. But whereas he told the brunet often how he felt, Steve could count on two hands the number of times Bucky actually said the words “I love you.” He didn’t need him to say it more, but each time he had, it affected Steve more profoundly than he’d anticipated.

“Seriously, though,” Steve whispered, struggling to regain his composure. “Maybe I just need a quickie over the desk.”

Bucky laughed, shaking his head against the blond’s neck and reaching between them to palm his cock. Steve knew this game, and it was entirely possible the younger man was going to do something mildly threatening that would thrill him as much as it terrified him. But instead of looking at him with danger in his eyes, Bucky turned his head to suck on his neck, whispering, “I can’t smell like sex in this meeting with Douglas.”

“You think you don’t always smell like sex?”

“I don’t always smell like you,” he clarified, before licking Steve’s neck.

“The hell you don’t.”

It had been so long since they’d fooled around in the office, and he was so keen to feel the brunet; he wanted to tear his pants down his legs then ruin the neat stacks of paper on the desk by throwing Bucky down on it.

Mercifully, Bucky kissed from his jaw down his neck and slid along Steve’s body to the floor so he could kneel in front of him.

But no...once on the floor, he snaked his hand down to undo his fly. With one hand, he reached between his legs; with the other, he made quick work of the blond’s belt and zipper. Steve closed his eyes, needing to calm his mind for a beat as Bucky freed him quickly, and without hesitation pulled his cock into his mouth. Steve had been nearly hard, and with his touch, he lengthened. Warm, wet suction slid down his length and back up again, harder with the second pass as he adjusted to the feel of Steve in his mouth.

He felt the brunet’s breath come out in little bursts against his navel, could hear the sound of his fingers moving over himself as he kneeled on the floor.

“Are you touching yourself?”

His head shifted slightly as he nodded.

“Were you already hard for me?”

Bucky stilled for a beat and then reached his hand up over his head. Bending down, Steve sucked two of his fingers into his mouth, tasting the precome there.

Fuck.

It obliterated him to see so clearly how much the younger man wanted this. Steve knew from experience how the brunet tasted before he was truly ready for him—for example, when the blond came over late and surprised him in his sleep with his mouth on his dick—and Steve knew how differently he tasted after they’d teased each other for what felt like an eternity. This, on his fingers, was full arousal, and it sent Steve’s head spinning. How long had he been thinking of this? All day? Since Steve left this morning? But Bucky didn’t let him linger over it too long, returning his hand quickly to the space between his legs.

Steve watched his head move, his lips slide over his length, and tried to let it calm himself. But even when Bucky’s mouth was on him like this or he was buried inside him, he’d always want more. It was impossible to have the younger man every way at once, but it never stopped Steve from imagining it: a whirlwind of positions and sounds and his hands in that brunet hair and on his hips, his fingers in his mouth and yet also between his legs and pulling on the back of his thighs.

When the blond ran his hands into Bucky’s hair he knew Steve wanted faster, and when his hips started to jerk he knew not to tease, not even a little. At least, not since he had a meeting any minute.

In a sudden flash, Steve remembered that his office was unlocked; Bucky had come in here thinking they’d discuss work. The outer office was closed but not locked, either.

“Oh, shit,” Steve groaned, because somehow the idea that they could be caught made it so much hotter. “Bucky—” Without more warning, his orgasm barreled down his spine, sharp and warm, and so intense it made his legs shake and his fists curl tightly in the younger man’s hair. Bucky arched against the pull, his arm jerking as he touched himself, causing the sounds of his own pleasure to come out muffled around Steve.

Looking down, he realized Bucky was watching his reaction...of course he was. His grey eyes were wide but somehow soft, and he looked fascinated. Steve was sure his expression was exactly how his own was every time he’d seen Bucky come apart under his touch. After a pause to catch his breath, Steve pulled out from his mouth and kneeled on the floor facing him, reaching to cup one of his hands over the one Bucky had on his own cock. The brunet shifted a little, letting Steve’s fingers take over. He began stroking him firmly and Bucky almost toppled backward. Steadying him with Steve’s other hand on his hip, he pressed a kiss to Bucky’s lips, humming at the way they were a little red, a little swollen.

“I’m really close,” he said, slipping his free hand around the blond’s neck for support.

“I like how you think you need to tell me that.”

Steve kept waiting for his touch to seem overly familiar, or his technique to grow tired, but each time Bucky felt the sweep and press of his thumb against the underside of the tip seemed more intense than the time before.

“Your mouth,” he managed in a tight voice. “Please, I want...”

Bucky never finished his thought. He didn’t need to. Steve quickly moved and in a rush the brunet’s back was on the floor and Steve swallowed him down. He began to enthusiastically suck him before he opened his jaw wider to take him down his throat and with that the younger man’s lips parted, and the quiet, husky sound of his trying-to-be-quiet orgasm raced through him. Steve swallowed everything he gave him, gently pulling off.

For a few seconds, he let Steve hold him down, breathe in the scent of him, and pretend that they were somewhere else, maybe his living room or his bedroom, certainly not on the floor of Steve’s unlocked office.

Seeming to remember this at the same time Steve did, Bucky pulled up his pants and adjusted himself before letting the blond take his hand to help him stand. As usual, the blond was struck by the quiet all around them, and wondered if they were ever as controlled and sneaky as they thought they were.

Bucky looked around, a little dazed, and then tossed him a lazy grin. “This will make it even harder to stay awake in my meeting.”

“Not sorry,” Steve murmured, moving to kiss his neck.

When Steve straightened, the younger man turned and walked into the washroom, pushing the sleeves of his dress shirt up his forearms so he could clean his hands. Steve stepped close, pressing his front to his back, and moved his hands under the water with Bucky’s. Soap slid between their fingers and he leaned his head back against Steve’s chest. He wanted to spend an hour washing their hands just so he could stand this close.

“Are we staying at your place tonight?” Steve asked. It was always a hard choice. His bed was better for play, but Bucky’s kitchen was better stocked.

The brunet turned off the water and reached to dry his hands on the towel. “Your place. I have to do laundry.”

“Don’t ever let me hear you say romance is dead.” The blond took his turn with the towel and then leaned to kiss him. Bucky kept his mouth closed, eyes open, and Steve pulled back a little.

“Steve?”

“Mmm?”

“I do, you know.”

“You do what?”

“Love you. Maybe I don’t tell you enough. Maybe that’s why you used the bat signal.”

Steve smiled, his heart squeezing tightly beneath his ribs. “I know you do. And that isn’t why I texted. I texted because I don’t get enough of your exclusive attention lately and I’m a greedy bastard. Hasn’t my mother warned you that I’ve never been good at sharing?”

“After we move to the new penthouse, things will quiet down and we’ll have more time.”

“In our new place? Doubtful,” the blond said. “And even if things do settle down, wouldn’t it be nice to get away for a little bit before all that anyway?”

“When?” he asked and looked around as if his packed calendar permeated every surface.

“There won’t ever be a perfect time. And when we move offices, it will be even crazier for a while.”

Laughing, Bucky shook his head. “Well, I can’t think of a worse time. Maybe late summer?” With a quick kiss, he turned and grabbed his phone from the desk, eyes widening when he saw the time. “I have to go,” he said, kissing Steve once more before leaving his office.

And the topic was dismissed.

But the word vacation stayed in Steve’s mind.


	3. Duty Calls

Bucky had big plans for tonight: make dinner, eat dinner together, finally decide which apartment they were going to rent in Midtown, discuss what to keep from both Steve’s place and his own, figure out when in the hell they’d find time to pack it all and move it in the first place.

Oh, and spend the remaining eight hours relearning every inch of his boyfriend’s body. Twice.

But that itinerary was before Steve walked through the door of his house to find Bucky cooking dinner in his kitchen. Before he’d tossed his jacket and keys to the couch and practically sprinted across the room. Before Steve pulled the brunet back against him and sucked at the skin below his ear as if he hadn’t tasted Bucky in weeks.

Needless to say, the plan had been downsized dramatically.

One: dinner. Two: naked.

Even so, Steve seemed inclined to skip steps.

“We’re never going to eat at this rate,” Bucky said, tilting his head back as Steve kissed along his neck. His warm breath curled over the skin and the knife Bucky had been holding clattered to the cutting board.

“And?” The blond whispered, pressing his hips to Bucky’s ass before turning him to face him.

The cabinets were hard against his back. Steve was harder against his front. He bent down and brushed his lips over the younger man’s throat.

“And...” Bucky mumbled. “Food is overrated.”

Steve laughed softly, hands skimming Bucky’s sides to rest at his hips. “Exactly. And God, it feels like I haven’t touched you in weeks.”

“This afternoon,” Bucky corrected, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes. “It was this afternoon, you know—when I sucked you off at your desk?”

“Oh, yes. I seem to remember something like that. It’s a little hazy, though. Perhaps you could refresh my memory...tongue, cock...”

“Nice mouth, Rogers. Does everyone else know you’re such a pig?”

He barked out a laugh. “If the way they looked at us after we fucked in the coatroom at my cousin’s wedding in February is any indication, then yes.”

“I hadn’t seen you in two weeks!” Bucky said, feeling his cheeks warm. “Don’t look so smug, you ass.”

“But I’m your ass,” Steve said and pressed a lingering kiss to his lips. “Don’t pretend like you don’t love it.” Bucky couldn’t argue. Steve might have spent more time out of New York than in it lately, but he was all Bucky’s. The blond never left any doubt about that. “And speaking of asses”—he reached down and squeezed the brunet’s, hard—“the things I’m going to do to yours tonight...”

Bucky started to reply—to argue or say something smart in return that would put him back in the verbal driver’s seat—but he couldn’t think of anything. It had felt like so long since they had fucked or had the time to do anything more than simply get each other off, even if it had only been days. Their schedules had been so choppy, keeping them apart for longer than felt comfortable. Not to mention the huge break they had that resulted in months of no contact between the pair. 

“Jesus. You’ve been stunned silent,” Steve said, eyes wide in surprise. “If I’d known that’s all it’d take to get a little peace and quiet, I’d have brought it up ages ago.”

“I...um.” The brunet opened and closed his mouth a few times but nothing came out. It was almost sudden, the way images of the things Bucky wanted Steve to do to him filtered through his mind. To pin him down on the mattress and deeply roll his hips into the brunet’s body. To push him up against a window overlooking the city and take Bucky from behind, careful fingers sliding up to wrap possessively around his neck. This was new. When the oven timer cut through the air, Bucky forced himself to pull away, still a little off balance.

He pulled the bread from the oven and drained the pasta, feeling Steve move up behind him again. He hooked his chin over Bucky’s shoulder, wrapped his arms around his waist.

“You smell so good,” the blond said. His mouth went back to work on his neck, as his hands began a slow descent down to the younger man’s belt. Bucky was more than a little tempted to let him finish.

Instead, he nodded to the cutting board. “Can you finish the salad for me, please?”

Steve groaned and loosened his tie, but went easily with Bucky’s request and he began working at the opposite counter.

Ribbons of garlic-scented steam curled up from the bowl as Bucky tossed the pasta and sauce together, trying to clear his head. As usual, it was impossible when he was nearby. There was just something about Steve Rogers that seemed to suck all the air out of a room.

Bucky had been blindsided by how hard he’d fallen for him, and lately, he missed the blond so much when he was gone. Sometimes Bucky would talk to his empty bedroom. “How was your day?” he’d ask. “My new assistant is hilarious,” he’d say. Or: “Has my apartment always been this quiet?”

Other days, when Bucky had worn his shirt to sleep so many times it had lost Steve’s smell, he’d sit in the huge chair in his empty living room, and wonder what Steve was doing. Wonder if it was possible for him to miss Bucky even a fraction as much as he missed him. Jesus. He never used to understand people who acted like this when their partners traveled. Bucky used to just assume it was a good opportunity for a full night’s sleep and some downtime.

Somehow, Steve had managed to work his way into every part of the brunet’s life. He was still the same stubborn, driven man he’d always been, and he loved that the blond hadn’t changed who he was just because they were together. He treated Bucky as an equal, and even though he knew Steve loved him more than anything, he never cut the younger man any slack. For that, he loved him even more.

Bucky carried their plates to the table and glanced back over his shoulder. Steve had his brow furrowed in slight concentration as he sliced a tomato.

“How is it going?” Bucky asked.

“Alright, you are definitely the more talented cook here.” He brought the salad over and pulled out the chair for the brunet.

He poured them each a glass of wine before dropping into the seat across from him. Steve watched him take a sip, his eyes moving from Bucky’s, to his lips, and back up again. A sweet smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, but then he seemed to blink back into focus, remembering something. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how’s Nat?”

Bucky shrugged, remembering the conversation he’d had with her earlier that day. 

“She’s okay, I guess. She is finishing up her MBA in a few months but I can tell the studying is getting to her. You know Nat. She’s not going to show the world how she feels, but I can tell she’s stressed over this.”

He hummed, considering. “She is incredibly smart, she will get through it, I’m sure”

The rest of the meal was all talk about work, about getting the new office off the ground and all the pieces that still needed to be put into place before that could happen. We’d begun discussing whether his family would be going back to New York again before the new offices opened.

There was a point where the conversation died and a pregnant silence filled the space. Bucky looked up, surprised to see Steve pushing his food around his plate.

“Everything okay over there, Rogers?”

A few seconds of silence passed before he said, “I miss you working for me.”

Bucky felt his eyes widen. “What?”

“I know. It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. We were awful to each other, and it was an impossible situation.” Holy crap, what an understatement. The fact that they managed to survive working in the same office together for ten months without bloodshed or some sort of manslaughter stapler incident still surprised Bucky. “But...,” the blond continued, looking up at him from across the table, “I saw you every day. It was predictable. Consistent. I pushed and you pushed back. It was the most fun I’ve ever had at a job. And I took it for granted.”

The younger man set his glass down and met his eyes, feeling an overwhelming surge of affection for this man. “That...makes sense,” Bucky said, searching for the right words. “I don’t think I appreciated what it meant to see you every day, either. Even if I did want to poison you on no less than twenty-seven separate occasions.”

“Ditto,” he replied with a smirk. “And sometimes I feel guilty for how many times I threw you out the window in my fantasies. But I most certainly plan on making it up to you.” Steve picked up his glass, took a long drink.

“Do you now?”

“Yep. I have a list.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow in silent question.

“Well, first I’m going to peel off those pants.” 

Bucky watched as he leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. The weight of Steve’s attention brought goosebumps to the brunet’s skin. Anyone else would have been intimidated—he could still remember a time when he was—but right now all Bucky felt was adrenaline, a thrill that shot through his chest and settled warm and heavy in his stomach.

“And that shirt,” Steve began, eyes on Bucky’s chest now. “I’d like to rip it open, hear the sound of that fabric tear under my hands.”

Bucky adjusted his hips, swallowed. The blond followed the movement, a smile slowly lifting at the corners of his mouth.

“Then maybe I’d spread you out on this table.” Steve leaned over, made a show of testing its sturdiness. “Put your legs over my shoulders, suck on you until you’re just begging for my cock.”

The brunet tried to seem unaffected, tried to break from his stare. Bucky couldn’t. He cleared his throat, his mouth suddenly dry. “You could have done that last night,” he said, teasing Steve.

“No. Last night we were tired and I just wanted to feel you come. Tonight, I want to take my time, undress you, kiss every inch of that body—fuck you. Watch you fuck me.”

Was it suddenly getting warm in here?

“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Bucky asked.

“Most definitely.”

“And what makes you think I don’t have a list of my own?” Bucky stood, dessert forgotten as he rounded the table to stop in front of Steve. His cock was already stiff, straining against the fly of his pants just the same as Bucky’s was. Steve followed his gaze and smirked up at him, pupils dark and so wide they drowned the baby blue surrounding them.

The brunet wanted to rip off his clothes and feel the heat of that stare on his skin, wake up in the morning, exhausted and sore and with the memory of Steve’s fingertips still pressing into his body. How did he make Bucky feel this way with just a look and a few dirty words?

Steve shifted in his chair and Bucky stepped between his legs, reaching out to push the hair—that eternally freshly fucked blond hair—from his forehead. The soft strands slipped between his fingers and he tilted Steve’s head back, bringing his eyes to his own. ‘I’ve missed you so much’, Bucky wanted to say. ‘Stay. Don’t go so far away. I love you.’

The words stuck in his throat and nothing more than a “Hi” slipped out instead.

Steve tilted his head, smile widening as he looked up at him. “Hi.” Warm hands gripped his hips, pulled him closer. Laughter curled around the single word and he knew the blond could read him like a book, saw every thought as clearly as if it were written across his forehead in ink. It’s not that Bucky wasn’t comfortable saying he loved him, it’s just that it was so new. Bucky had never said it to anyone before him, and sometimes it felt scary, like opening up his chest and handing Steve his heart.

Steve’s hand moved up to glide along Bucky’s stomach and chest, fingertips grazing along his collarbone. “I can’t help but wonder what’s under this,” he said.

Bucky sucked in a breath, felt his dick harden impossibly more in his pants. He slipped one hand under the hem of the shirt, pushing it up and over the brunet’s head. His eyes moved over his bare torso, humming in appreciation. 

Long fingers moved to the front of the younger man’s pants and the click and slide of the buckle and thick leather belt filled the room. Steve did as he’d promised, purposefully peeling the fabric from his hips and down his legs to pool at his feet, leaving Bucky in only his boxer briefs.

The air conditioner switched on and a low whir carried through the apartment, a burst of cool air rushing along his exposed skin. Steve pulled him down onto his lap, his legs on either side of his hips. The rough fabric of his pants brushed against the backs of his bare thighs. Bucky should have felt vulnerable like this—with him in so little and Steve fully dressed—but he relished it. It was so much like their first night together at his home, after Bucky’s presentation, after they’d both admitted they didn’t want to be without the other and Steve let the brunet tie him up so he could have the nerve to hear how much Bucky had hurt him.

And then the younger man realized this position was intentional. He suspected Steve was thinking about that exact night, too. His eyes shone with such hunger, such adoration, that Bucky couldn’t help but feel a sense of power, like there wasn’t anything this man wouldn’t do if he just asked.

The brunet reached for the buttons of his shirt, wanting him naked and over Bucky behind him—everywhere. He wanted to taste the blond, scratch marks into his skin, and connect them with his fingers, his lips and his teeth. Bucky wanted to stretch him out on the table and fuck him until any thought of either of them ever leaving this room was a distant memory.

Somewhere in the apartment, a phone rang. They froze, neither of them saying anything, both waiting, hoping it had been a fluke and that nothing but silence would follow. But the shrill ringtone—one Bucky had become all too familiar with—filled the air again. Work. The emergency ringtone. And not the regular emergency one—the emergency-emergency one. Steve swore, resting his forehead against the younger man’s chest. Bucky’s heart pounded beneath his ribs and his breaths felt too quick, too loud.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Steve said when it continued to ring. “I have to—”

“I know.” Bucky stood, using the back of the chair to support his shaky legs.

Steve scrubbed his hands over his face before he stood and crossed the room, finding his phone where he’d slung his jacket over the back of the couch. “Yeah,” he said and then listened.

Bucky bent for his shirt and slipped it over his shoulders, found his pants and pulled them up his legs. He carried the dishes into the kitchen while he talked. He was trying to give Steve some sense of privacy but grew concerned as his voice continued to rise.

“What do you mean they can’t find it?” he shouted. The brunet leaned against the doorway and watched as he paced back and forth in front of the wide wall of windows. “This is happening tomorrow and someone’s misplaced the fucking master file? Can’t someone else handle this?” A pause ensued in which Bucky swore he actually watched Steve’s blood pressure rise. “Are you kidding?” Another pause. He closed his eyes tight and took a deep breath. “Fine. I’ll be there in twenty.”

When he ended the call, it took a moment for him to look at the younger man.

“It’s okay,” Bucky said.

“It’s not.”

He was right. It wasn’t okay. It sucked. “Can’t someone else handle it?”

“Who? I can’t trust something this important to those incompetent assholes. The Timbk2 account launches tomorrow and the marketing team can’t find the file with the financial specs—” He stopped and shook his head, reached for his jacket. “God, we need someone in New York who knows what the fuck they’re doing. I’m so sorry, Buck.”

Steve knew how much they needed tonight, but he also had a job to do. Bucky knew this better than anyone.

“Go,” He said, closing the distance between them. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.” He handed Steve his keys and leaned to kiss him.

“In my bed?”

Bucky nodded.

“Wear my shirt.”

“Only your shirt.”

“I love you.”

The brunet grinned. “I know. Now go save the world.”


	4. Reflection

_You have got to be fucking kidding me._

Steve turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine hard enough for the RPMs to hit red. He wanted to peel out and tear down the street, leaving the sign of his frustration as black tire marks on the road.

He was tired. Fuck was he tired, and he hated to have to clean up other people’s messes at work. He’d been working twelve-, fifteen-, hell, even eighteen-hour days for months, and the one night he was able to put aside time with Bucky at home, he was called in.

Steve paused as the word seemed to bounce around inside his skull: home.

Whether they were at his place or Bucky’s, out with friends, or in that tiny little shithole Chinese restaurant he liked so much, it felt like home to Steve. The strangest part was that the house that had cost him a fortune had never felt like home until Bucky spent time there. Was Bucky’s home also with Steve?

They hadn’t even had time to pick where they would live in Midtown. They had identified the new location for RMG, made a map of where each of the offices would be, drawn up blueprints of the renovations and hired a designer...but Bucky and him didn’t have an apartment to go to together.

Which was the greatest sign that old habits die hard because, in reality, his relationship with Bucky had completely altered his relationship to his job. Only a year ago Steve had been committed to one thing: his career. Now, the thing that mattered most to him was Bucky, and every time his career got in the way of being with the younger man it burned him up inside. He didn’t even know specifically when that had happened, but he suspected the change had been effected long before Steve would have ever admitted it. Maybe it was all the times he tried to say sorry or convince Bucky to talk to him again after all the nasty things that were said during the breakup. Most likely it was even earlier than all of that, on the first night he kissed the brunet roughly in the conference room, in his darkest, weakest moment. Thank God he had been such an idiot.

Steve glanced down at the clock on his dashboard and the date, backlit in red, hit him like a fist to the chest: May 5th. Exactly one year ago, Steve had watched Bucky walk off the plane from San Diego, his shoulders set in hurt and anger at how the blond had essentially thrown him under the bus after he’d covered for him with a client. The next day Bucky resigned; he’d left Steve. He blinked, trying to clear the memory from his mind. Bucky came back eventually, Steve reminded himself. They’d worked it out in the past eleven months, and despite all of his frustration with his work schedule, Steve had never been happier. Bucky was the only person he’d ever want.

He thought back to his previous breakup, with Lorraine almost two years ago now. Their relationship started the way one climbs on an escalator: with a single step and then moving without effort along a single path. They started out friendly and easily slipped into physical intimacy. The situation worked perfectly for Steve because she provided companionship and sex, and she’d never asked for more than he offered. When they broke up, she admitted she knew Steve wouldn’t give her more, and for a while, the sex and quasi-intimacy had been enough. Until, for her, they weren’t anymore.

After a long embrace and one final kiss, he’d let her go. The blond had gone straight to his favorite restaurant for a quiet dinner alone, and then headed to bed early, where he slept the entire night without waking once. No drama. No heartbreak. It ended and Steve closed the door on that part of his life, completely ready to move on. Three months later, he was back in New York.

It was comical to compare that to the reaction he had to lose Bucky. Steve essentially turned into a filthy hobo, not eating, not showering, and surviving entirely on scotch and self-pity. He remembered clutching to the tiny details Natasha would share with him about the brunet—how he was doing, how he looked—and trying to determine from these tidbits whether he missed Steve and could possibly be as miserable as he was.

The day Bucky returned to RMG was one filled with relief and nervousness all in one. Although they had made up, Bucky had insisted that he sleep at his place and Steve sleep at his own so that they would actually get some rest. After a chaotic morning, Steve walked into the break room to find the younger man snacking on a small pack of almonds, reading some marketing reports. Natasha was heating up leftovers in the tiny microwave, as they talked quietly. The blond came in to pour himself a cup of coffee, and the two stopped their conversation, leaving the three of them to stand together in loaded silence for what felt like fifteen minutes. Natasha was leaving to go and finish her degree much like Bucky had, that day had been her last full day at the company.

Steve had finally broken it.

“Natasha,” Steve said, and his voice felt too loud in the silent room. Her eyes turned to the blond’s, wide and clear. “Thank you for coming to me that first day Bucky was gone. Thank you for giving me whatever updates you could. For that, and other reasons, I’m sorry to see you go.”

She shrugged, smoothing her hair to the side and giving him a small smile. “I’m just glad to see you two together again. Things have been way too quiet around here. And by quiet I mean boring. And by boring I mean nobody screaming or calling each other a hateful shrew.” She coughed and took an almost comically loud slurp from her drink.

Bucky groaned. “No chance of that anymore, I assure you.” He popped an almond into his mouth. “He may not be my boss anymore, but he’s still most definitely a screamer.”

Laughing, Steve stole a peek at his ass as he stood and bent down to pull a bottle of water out of the bottom shelf of the fridge.

“Still,” The blond said, turning back to Nat. “I appreciate that you kept me up to date. I would have probably lost my mind otherwise.”

Her eyes softened and, as she fidgeted, Steve could tell she was a little uncomfortable in the face of his rare display of emotion. “As I said, I’m glad it worked out. These things are worth fighting for.” She lifted her chin and gave Bucky one last smile before leaving the room.

That giddiness he’d felt after Bucky’s return made it easy to ignore the whispers that followed them through the halls of the company. Steve had his office and the brunet had his now, and they were each determined to prove to themselves as much as anyone else that they could do this.

They’d lasted almost an hour apart.

“I missed you,” Bucky had said, slipping into the blond’s office and closing the door behind himself. “Do you think they’ll give me my old office back?”

“No. Much as I like the idea, at this point, it would be blatantly inappropriate.”

“I was only half-serious.” Bucky rolled his eyes and then paused, looking around. Steve could almost see each memory coming back to him: when he’d spread his legs across the desk for him, when he’d let Steve make him come with his mouth to distract him from his worries, and, Steve imagined, each time they’d sat together in this office, not saying everything they could have said so much sooner.

“I love you,” Steve said. “I’ve loved you for a long time.”

Bucky blinked up and then moved close, stretching to kiss the blond. And then he pulled him into the bathroom and begged Steve to make love to him against the wall, at noon on a Monday.

As Steve pulled into the parking deck at the offices and turned into his spot, he remembered Nat’s words. Shutting off the car, he stared at the concrete wall in front of him. _These things are worth fighting for_. Natasha had taken her own advice home to New York’s most deplorable womanizer. She’d looked out for Steve when she knew he was broken and lost without Bucky. In contrast, the blond let Natasha continue on with a man Steve knew was unfaithful, all because he felt it wasn’t his place to interfere. Where would Steve be if Nat had done the same?

Contemplating what that said about himself, Steve climbed from the car and into the main lobby. The night security guard waved, then went back to his newspaper as the blond headed to the elevators. The building was so empty he could hear every creak and click of the machine around him. Wheels whirred along cables and the car gave a quiet thud as it settled on the eighteenth floor.

Steve knew no one else was here. The team was scrambling to find the newest version of the file, and in their panic were probably scouring their local document files on their laptops. He doubted anyone had thought to come in and check the work server.

In the end, he had to leave Bucky for what amounted to twenty-three minutes of work, which effectively guaranteed his mood tomorrow would be thunderous. Steve hated having to do someone else’s job. The contract had been mislabeled and—exactly as he had suspected—put into the wrong folder on the server. In fact, a hard copy was sitting face-up on his desk, where someone actually competent might have noticed it and spared him this trip to the office. The blond forwarded the file to one of his executives in Marketing and made several copies of the document itself, highlighting the parties on the first page and pointedly placing one on the desk of every person involved in the account, before finally leaving the office. It was, in a way, kind of dickish of him to be so precise. But then, this was what they earned when they pulled him away from Bucky.

Steve knew these small inconveniences got him too worked up, but it was this type of detail that defined a team. Which was exactly why he needed someone on top of their game for the new location in Chicago. He groaned as he dropped back into his car and started the engine, knowing this was just one more thing he needed to accomplish in the next month.

In his current mood, Steve was in no state to return to Bucky. He’d only be surly and irritable...and not really in the fun way.

God, he just wanted to be with him. Why did it have to be so fucking difficult? Steve had so few hours with Bucky as it was, and he didn’t want to waste them because he was stressed about work and apartment hunting and finding someone who could just do their fucking job without being babysat. They’d complained about not seeing enough of each other, of working too hard, why didn’t they just...fix it? Go away? He knew Bucky thought the timing was all wrong, but when would it ever be right? Nobody was going to just hand it to them and since when had Steve ever been the type of person who waited for something to come along anyway?

Fuck that. Fix it.

“Get your shit together, Steve.” His voice rang out in the quiet interior of the car. He looked at the time and sighed, all he wanted was sleep and Bucky.  
But he had one more stop to make. He knew it was late to go to Peggy’s, but he had no choice. His mind was spinning with plans, and he couldn’t head to bed until every last detail had been sorted out.

On the twenty-minute drive to the house, he called and left a message for his travel agent. Then he left a message on Sam’s work voicemail that he was leaving for three weeks. He didn’t even let himself imagine his reaction. They had a new office, they had everything at work sorted, and they could leave the business of packing up to someone else. Steve left a message for each of his senior managers letting them know the plan and what he expected each of them to handle in his absence. And then he rolled down all of the windows and let the cool night air whip around him, taking all of his stress with it.

Pulling up in front of the house, Steve laughed thinking back on the first time Bucky and himself had come here together as a couple.

_It was three days after his presentation to the scholarship board. Two of those days they’d scarcely left my home or my bed. But after the constant calls and texts from friends asking them to come over, for him to let them share some time with the brunet, they agreed to a dinner at Peggy’s house. Everyone had missed him._

_They talked on the drive, laughing and teasing, his free hand entwined with one of the younger man’s. Absently, he ran the index finger of his other hand in small circles over the top of Steve’s wrist, as if reassuring himself that it was real, that Steve was real, that they were. They hadn’t faced the world outside yet, other than that night out with his friends following the presentation. The transition would no doubt be at least a little awkward. But he would never have expected Bucky to be anxious about any of it. He’d always faced every challenge with his own brand of bullheaded fearlessness._

_It was only when they stood on the porch and the blond reached to open the front door that he realized Bucky’s hand inside his was shaking._

_“What’s wrong?” Steve pulled his hand back, turned him to face himself._

_Bucky rolled his shoulders. “Nothing. I’m good.”_

_“Unconvincing.”_

_He threw Steve an annoyed look. “I’m fine. Just open the door.”_

_“Holy shit,” Steve said on an exhale, stunned. “James Barnes is actually nervous.”_

_This time he turned to glare at him fully. “You spotted that? Christ, you’re brilliant. Someone should make you a COO and give you a big fancy office.” Bucky reached to open the door himself._

_Steve stopped his hand from turning the knob and a grin spread across his face. “Bucky?”_

_“I just haven’t seen them since before...you know. And they saw you when you were all...” He made a gesture around the blond, which he gathered was meant to indicate “when Steve was a complete disaster, after Bucky left him.”_

_“Just...let’s not make this a thing. I’m fine,” he went on._

_“I’m just enjoying the rare sighting of a jittery Bucky. Give me a second, let me savor this.”_

_“Fuck off.”_

_“Fuck off?” Steve stepped in front of him, moved until his body pressed into his own. “Are you trying to seduce me, Mister Barnes?”_

_Finally, he laughed, his shoulders surrendering their tense determination. “I just don’t want it to be—”_

_The front door flew open, and Tony took a step forward, enveloping Bucky in a massive hug. “There he is!”_

_The brunet peeked up at Steve over Tony’s shoulder and laughed. “—awkward,” he finished, wrapping his arms around him._

_Just inside the doorway stood Peggy, Sam, and the rest of the group, wearing the biggest shit-eating grins Steve had ever seen. Peggy’s eyes were suspiciously misty._

_“It’s been way too long,” Tony said, releasing Bucky and looking right at the blond._

_Groaning inwardly, Steve registered that this entire night could very easily turn into a giant recap of what a trial this whole thing had been for Bucky, of how impossible Steve had been to work with; the details of Bucky’s challenging attitude would be whitewashed for history._

_It was a good thing he looked so damn fit in his black polo shirt. Steve needed the distraction._

_Bucky stepped into the house and hugged Peggy, and Sam, before looking up at the blond. “I don’t know what I was worried about,” he whispered._

_“Were you nervous?” Peggy asked, eyes wide._

_“I just left so abruptly. I’ve felt bad about that, and about not seeing either of you for months...” the younger man trailed off._

_“No, no, no, no—you had to put up with Steve,” Tony said, ignoring the blond’s irritated sigh. “Trust us, we get it.”_

_“Come on,” Steve groaned, pulling him back. “We don’t need to make this a thing.”_

Climbing out of the car, Steve smiled at the memory of the rest of that evening: the ten minutes during which they’d all dissolved into hysterics over their shared experiences of getting food poisoning at inopportune times, the unbelievable crème brulée Peggy had served after dinner, and, much later, the way Bucky and he had barely made it back inside his house before falling into a tangle of limbs and sweat on his living room floor.

Steve turned the knob on the front door, knowing Peggy would still be up. The knob creaked and he eased it open with familiar care, lifting it slightly where he knew the wood swelled a little at the threshold.

But Peggy greeted Steve in the entryway, wearing her old purple robe and holding two cups of tea.

“I don’t know why,” she said, extending one cup to me, “but I was pretty sure you were going to turn up here tonight.”

“Good intuition?” Steve asked, taking the cup and bending to kiss her cheek. He lingered there, hoping he could keep his emotions in check tonight.

“Something like that.” Tears filled her eyes and she turned away before he could say something about them. “Come on, I know why you’re here. I’ve got it down in the kitchen.”


	5. Plans to Reignite an Old Flame

“And you’re sure we’ll get the signatures on time?” Bucky asked his assistant, who checked her watch and jotted something down in her notepad.

“Yes. Aaron’s on his way over there now. We should have them back by lunch.”

“Good,” he said, closing the files and handing them back. “We’ll give it a final look before the meeting and if everything goes—” The door to his outer office opened, and a very determined-looking Steve walked inside. His assistant let out a terrified squeak and he waved for her to go. She practically sprinted out of there.

Long legs carried him across the room in only a few strides, and Steve stopped just on the other side of the desk, slapping two crisp white envelopes down on a stack of marketing reports.

Bucky looked down to the envelopes and then back up to him. “Something about this is so familiar,” he said. “Which one of us is going to slam the door and storm out to the stairwell?”

The blond rolled his eyes. “Just open them.”

“Well, good morning to you, too, Mr. Rogers.”

“Bucky, don’t be a pain in the ass.”

“You’d rather be a pain in mine?”

His eyes softened and he leaned over the desk to kiss the brunet. He’d gotten home late last night, long after Bucky had fallen asleep. He had woken to the sound of his alarm clock to find Steve’s warm and very naked body pressed against his own. Bucky swore he deserved some kind of a medal for managing to leave that bed.

“Good morning, Mister Barnes,” he said softly. “Now open the damn envelopes.”

“If you insist. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Slamming things down on desks has never really ended well for us. Well, for me. Maybe you could rectify that...”

“Buck.”

“Fine, fine.” the younger man lifted the flap on the one with his name and pulled a printed sheet of paper from inside. “JFK to CDG,” he read. “New York City to France.” He looked up at Steve. “They’re sending me somewhere?”

Steve beamed, and frankly, he looked so good while doing it Bucky was glad he was sitting down. “France. Marseille, to be exact. The second ticket is behind that one.”

Plane tickets, one envelope for each of them. Scheduled to leave Friday. It was Tuesday already.

“I...I don’t understand. We’re going to France? This isn’t about last night, is it? Because we have busy lives, Steve. These kinds of things will always happen. I promise I wasn’t upset.”

Steve quickly rounded the desk and kneeled in front of him. “No. This isn’t about last night. It’s about a lot of nights. This is about me putting what’s important first. And this,” he said, motioning between them. “This is what’s important. We hardly see each other anymore, Bucky, and that’s not going to change after the move. I love you. I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. But...ahhh, I’m a little surprised. France is...really far and there’s so much to do and—”

“Not just France. A private house—a villa. It belongs to my friend and it’s beautiful and huge and empty,” Steve added. “With a giant bed, several of them. A pool. We can cook and walk around naked; we don’t even have to answer the phone if we don’t want to. Come on, Buck.”

“I love that you threw in the walking-around-naked part,” Bucky said. “Because that’s most definitely how you’d close the deal.”

He moved closer, clearly aware the resolve was breaking. “I pride myself on always knowing my opponent. So what do you say? Come with me? Please?”

“Jesus, Steve. It’s like ten in the morning and you’re killing me with the swoons here.”

“I debated tranquilizing you and throwing you over my shoulder, but that might make things sticky at customs.”

The younger man took a deep breath and peered down at the tickets. “Okay, so we’d leave on the ninth and come back...wait, is this right?”

Steve followed his gaze. “What?”

“Three weeks? I can’t just drop everything and go to France for three weeks, Steve!”

He stood, confused. “Why? I was able to make arrangements and—”

“Are you serious? First, we’re moving in a month. A month! And we haven’t even picked out an apartment! And let’s not forget the minor detail called my job? I have meetings and an entire department to hire and move to Chicago!”

Steve’s face fell; clearly this was not the reaction he’d anticipated. The sun was behind him and when he turned his head, tilting it the slightest bit, the light caught his long eyelashes, the angles of his face.

Ugh. Guilt swelled in Bucky’s chest like a balloon. “Fuck. I’m sorry.” He leaned into the blond and laid his head against his shoulder. “That is absolutely not the way I meant to say all that.”

Strong arms wrapped around him and he felt Steve exhale. “I know.”

He took Bucky’s hand and led him to the small table in the corner of the room. He motioned for him to take a seat, while he took the chair opposite him. “Shall we negotiate?” he said, a challenge in his eyes the brunet hadn’t seen since he’d stepped into the office.

This Bucky could do.

Steve leaned forward, hands clasped and elbows on the table in front of him. “The move,” he began. “Admittedly, it’s a big one. But we have a Realtor; I’ve seen the top three contenders. You just need to decide if you need to see them, or if you trust me to choose. We can let the Realtor handle the rest and pay people to do the actual packing and moving part.” He raised a brow in question and Bucky nodded for him to continue. “And your job...I’m so incredibly proud of you, Bucky. I know how hard you work and how important you are. But there will never be a perfect time. We’ll always be busy, there will always be people who want our attention, and there will always be things that feel like they can’t wait. It’s a good exercise for you in delegating tasks—I love you, but you suck at delegating. And it’s going to be even more hectic when we move. When’s the next time we’ll have a chance to do this? I want to be with you. I want to make you come on a bed in France where nobody can just drop by on the weekend or call either of us away for work.”

“You’re making it very hard to be the responsible adult here,” Bucky said.

“Being responsible is overrated.”

He felt his mouth fall open and could do nothing but gape at the blond. Bucky was just about to ask who this easygoing person was, and what they’d done with his boyfriend when there was a knock at the door. He pulled his eyes away from a very pleased boyfriend to see a terrified intern walk in, staring at Steve with fear in her eyes. No doubt she’d drawn the short straw and been sent down to retrieve him.

“Um...Excuse me, Mister Barnes,” she stuttered, gaze locked on Bucky instead of her real target. “They’re waiting for Mr. Rogers in the conference room on twelve...”

“Thank you,” the brunet answered. She left and he turned back to Steve.

“We’ll discuss this later?” he asked quietly, standing.

Bucky nodded, still a little off-balance from his change in attitude. “Thank you,” he said, vaguely motioning to the tickets, but meaning so much more.

Steve kissed his forehead. “Later.”

Travel had...never really worked out for Steve and him. San Diego had been perfect while they were still tucked away in their own little bubble. It was when they tried to rejoin the living that it had all gone to hell. In a big way.

Bucky had left RMG after San Diego, partly due to the stress of the work environment and to go back to school to finish his degree. He had his sights set on a higher career and was tired of waiting to return to school.

But the distance became too much, it was painfully obvious that things were not working. Steve had proposed months before and they were already looking at destinations and a date for the wedding, but this distance became a massive bump in the road. They tried to make it work at first, both finding time to fly to meet or see one another for a weekend, but as time went on, life caught up to them and it was no longer working in the slightest. Bucky tried to convince himself that separating from Steve would be beneficial, that it would give him time and space to himself, or that without the distraction of Steve he could focus on his degree. It didn’t go as smoothly as he had hoped and Bucky basically spent the months separated from Steve wallowing in his own sadness. 

Guilt ate away at Bucky the rest of the morning. He shouldn’t have been so hasty to tell Steve it was impossible. Here he was, trying to be flexible, and Bucky was the one telling him to consider work. What the hell was wrong with him? He tried to catch the blond between meetings. He tried to meet up with him for lunch. The closest the younger man got was passing him in the hall, a group of executives babbling around him like fanboys around a celebrity.

“I need to talk to you,” Bucky mouthed.

“Bat signal?” He thought he said back.

The brunet shook his head. “Dinner?”

He nodded, blew Bucky a kiss behind everyone’s back, and was off, herded down the hall and into the elevator.


	6. The Waiting Game

Steve rolled over, grabbing his phone from the bedside table and muting the alarm with a swipe of his thumb. He was exhausted, having fallen asleep only two hours before. He’d worked until almost two and then tried to slip into bed without waking Bucky, but he’d stirred and climbed on top of the blond before he could say anything.

As if Steve would have stopped him.

He couldn’t really complain that it meant another hour of sleep lost, but now, when the brunet’s hand reached blindly beneath the blankets, sweeping down his stomach to curl around his cock, Steve knew he had to stop him. He had a flight to catch, alone.

Bucky was coming to France, but he was leaving a day after Steve, insisting with a stubbornness all his own that he needed the rest of Friday to get the last few things sorted. The blond would have waited for him, but because the flights were all last minute there weren’t any direct flights, nor were there any seats together anyway. Deciding to keep his flight, Steve figured he’d get there early and get them situated.

“I don’t think we have time,” Steve mumbled into his hair.

“Not buying it,” Bucky said, voice croaky with sleep. “This guy,” he said, squeezing Steve’s erection in his grip, “thinks we have plenty of time.”

“The car is picking me up in fifteen minutes, and thanks to your appetite last night, I need another shower.”

“There was that one time you only needed two minutes to come. You’re telling me you don’t have two minutes?”

“Morning sex is never only two minutes,” The blond reminded him. “Not when you’re all sleepy and rumpled and warm.” He rolled out of bed and walked into the bathroom to the sound of the younger man’s groan muffled by his stolen pillow.

When Steve emerged, clean and dressed, he sat up in bed, still hugging the pillow and sort-of-pretending he wasn’t upset that they had to fly separately to France.

“Don’t pout,” He murmured, bending to kiss the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “You’ll just confirm what I’ve always suspected: you can’t function without me.”

The blond expected him to roll his eyes or pinch Steve playfully but he blinked down to his tie and reached to needlessly adjust it. “I can function without you. But I don’t like being away from you. It feels like you take my home with you when you go.”

Well, fuck.

Steve laid his garment bag across the bed and took his face in his hands until the brunet looked up, and could see the effect his words had on him. Bucky smiled, tongue darting out to wet his lips.

With one final kiss, Steve whispered, “I’ll see you in France.”

Steve would lose a day in transit, arriving on Saturday. Bucky’s flight was only twelve hours after his, which would have him getting into Marseille on Sunday. It would give the blond time to prepare for his arrival, but he knew the house would be spotless and stocked with food and drink and he would have nothing to do.

An idle Steve...and all that.

He settled into the first-class cabin, declining the champagne, and pulled out his phone to text Bucky.

‘Boarded. See you across the pond.’

His phone buzzed several seconds later with a message from the younger man.

‘Rethinking this whole trip. There’s a lot of sales at the mall this weekend.’

Steve chuckled to himself, choosing to ignore this one and slipping the phone back into his jacket pocket. Closing his eyes as the other passengers filed in past him, he remembered their past trips. They’d only traveled together a handful of times, but nothing ever went according to plan. Had Steve incurred some sort of vacation voodoo he wasn’t aware of? It seemed they were destined to be plagued by trips that went terribly off course, were taken separately, were colored by miserable arguments...or were canceled altogether.

Steve's stomach turned when he remembered their attempt at a vacation last Thanksgiving. On impulse one weekend they’d purchased tickets to St. Bart’s and rented a house on the water. It was meant to be perfect but instead, it led to the first time Bucky stopped speaking to him since their reconciliation.

“Motherfucking cocksucking son of a whore.”

The blond looked up from his desk, his eyebrows inching to his hairline as Bucky slammed the door and stormed to the desk.

“Did the gimp escape the dungeon again, Mister Barnes?”

“Close enough. Odinson is pushing up launch.”

Steve stood so abruptly his chair skidded back and banged into the wall. “What?”

“January is the new March, apparently. The first press blast is set to go out January seventh.”

“That’s a horrible time to pitch something like this! Everyone is still drunk or cleaning up the holiday mess. No one is buying fancy apartments.”

“That’s what I told Big Thor.”

“Did you also tell him he needs to stick to counting his Benjamins and leave the marketing to us?”

Bucky laughed, crossing his arms across his chest. “I may have actually used those words. With a few other gangster terms thrown in.”

Steve sat back down, rubbing his hands over his face. Their flight was scheduled to leave in the morning, on Thanksgiving Day, and there was no way they could leave work now. “You told him this was okay?”

Across the desk, Steve could sense that he grew completely still. “What was my option?”

“To tell him we’re not going to be ready!”

“But that’s a lie. We can be ready.”

The blond dropped his hands, gaping at Bucky. “Yes, but only if we work fifteen-hour days through the holidays—and all to accommodate his shitty timing for a launch.”

Bucky threw his hands up, eyes on fire. “He’s paying us a million dollars for basic marketing and we’re inking a deal for another ten-million-dollar media campaign. You think fifteen-hour days are unreasonable to keep our biggest client?”

“Of course not! But he’s also not your only client! Rule number one in business is to not ever let the big dog know how small the other dogs are.”

“Damnit, Steve. I’m not going to tell him we can’t deliver.”

“Sometimes a little pushback is a good thing. You’re being green, Barnes. If you weren’t sure, you should have sent the call to me.”

Steve immediately wanted to pull the words back into his mouth. The brunet’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropped, and fuck, his hands curled into fists at his sides. Steve wanted to reach down to protect his balls.

“Are you fucking serious right now? Are you going to cut my fucking steak at dinner, too, you egomaniacal asshat?”

Steve couldn’t help himself. “Only if I can feed it to you and help you chew.”

Bucky’s face smoothed and the blond could see him calculate how much effort he wanted to put into kicking his ass. “We’re skipping St. Bart’s,” he said, flatly.

“Obviously. Why do you think I’m pissed?”

“Well, even if we did still go at this point, you’d be sleeping alone with your hand and a tube of lube.”

“I could work with that. These two hands provide some variety.”

The younger man blinked away, jaw clenched. “Are you trying to make me more angry?”

“Sure, why not.”

Stormy eyes turned back on Steve, narrowed. His voice shook a little with one word: “Why?”

“So you can feel the pain more. Because you should have told Thor that these kinds of decisions have to be cleared with the entire team and we’d have an answer for him after the holiday.”

“How do you know I didn’t say that?”

“Because you came in here and delivered the news. You didn’t act like it was a suggestion.”

Bucky stared at him, eyes flashing through a hundred responses. Steve waited to see how many curse words he could string together but he surprised him instead and turned to leave the office.

Bucky didn’t stay over that night. It was only the seventh night they’d spent apart after his presentation last June, and Steve didn’t even try to sleep. Instead, he watched Netflix and wondered which of them would apologize first.

The problem was Steve was right, and he knew it.

Thanksgiving morning arrived with snow flurries and a wind so strong it pushed the blond forward into the building as he walked, alone, from the parking garage to his office.

It had never occurred to him that Bucky would leave him again after their fight. He suspected Bucky and him were in it for the long haul, whether the long haul officially began tomorrow or ten years in the future. There wasn’t anything he could do to scare Steve off.

And while he felt the same was true for the brunet, he rarely walked away from a fight. He either battled with Steve until he was figuratively on his knees or Bucky ended up on his knees in an entirely different way.

Only a few RMG employees were at work on Thanksgiving—the members of the Odinson team. And every one of them glared at Bucky as he walked down the hall to get some coffee. Knowing him, he had probably worked late last night and slept at his desk.

He didn’t even glance over to where Steve stood in the doorway to the conference room. Still, he could almost hear the younger man thinking as he passed every disgruntled team member: “You can suck my dick. And you, too, can suck my dick. And you? The slacker with the pathetic pout? You can really suck my dick.”

Bucky headed to his office, settled in, and left his door open.

‘Come and get me’, he was saying. ‘Come on in and let’s have it out.’

But for as much as everyone probably wanted to give him an earful for making them cancel their holiday plans, no one did. Each of them had been raised in the business world under the same ethos: work trumps all. The last person to leave work is the hero. The first person in has bragging rights. Working over holidays gets you into heaven.

And while a more experienced executive would have told Odinson that what he’d asked wasn’t possible, as always Steve admired Bucky’s determination. This wasn’t just about meeting a new milestone for him. This was him launching his career. This was his foundation. Bucky was Steve a few years ago.

After everyone else had left for the evening, Steve knocked on his open door, gently alerting the brunet to his presence.

“Mr. Rogers,” he said as he peered up at him. The city skyline winked behind him, speckled lights covering his entire wall of windows. “Here to show me how to grow bigger balls so I can get the job done?”

“Bucky, I’m pretty sure if you wanted to grow some, you could do it by will alone.”

He let a half-smile form, pushing back from his desk and adjusting his legs. “I’d grow some just so I could have bigger ones than yours.”

Steve couldn’t contain his laughter, bending over and collapsing into the chair across the desk from him. “I knew you were going to say that.”

His eyebrows pulled together a little. “Well, before you say anything else, yes, I know this sucks. And...I think you were right. We could be in St. Bart’s right now, on the beach.”

The blond started to speak, but he held up his hand to urge him to wait.

“But the thing is, Steve, no matter how much I should have, I didn’t want to tell Odinson no. I wanted to deliver because we can, and we should. It’s down to the wire anyway and we’ve had a lot of time to work on this. It felt disingenuous to say we couldn’t make it happen.”

“True,” Steve conceded, “but by letting him push a milestone ahead to the beginning of the quarter, you’ve set a precedent.”

“I know,” he said, rubbing his temples with his fingertips.

“But actually, I wasn’t coming in here to tell you what you’d done was wrong. I was coming in here to tell you I understand why you did it. I can’t really fault you.”

Bucky dropped his hands, eyeing him cautiously.

“At this point in your career, I can’t be surprised you said yes to Odinson.”

His mouth opened and Steve could see a litany of curse words form on his tongue.

“Easy, firecracker,” Steve said, leaning forward and holding up his hands. “I don’t mean you’re naive; I’m not pulling the ‘seasoning’ card again—though it’s true no matter how much you hate to hear it. I mean you’re still building. You want to show the world that you’re Atlas—and to a Titan, that fucking celestial sphere weighs nothing. It’s just that it’s impacted the entire team, and over a holiday. I get why you did it, and I also get why you’re conflicted. I’m sorry this is hard for you because I’ve been there.” He lowered his voice, moved a little closer. “It sucks.”

The room seemed to grow darker, the sun dipping behind the horizon just as he’d finished his sentence. Bucky watched me, face smooth and practically unreadable.

Well, unreadable to anyone else. Anyone who hadn’t seen that face a thousand times, the one that told me Bucky wanted to smack him, kiss him, punch him, and then fuck him.

“Don’t smirk,” he said, eyes narrowing. “I see what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“Trying to build me up. Being a hardass, yet also my lover. Damnit, Steve.”

“You’re going to fuck me in your office!” The blond crowed, his words colored with surprise and glee. “God, you’re easy.”

The younger man stood quickly, walking around the desk and reaching immediately for Steve’s tie. “Damnit.” He unknotted it, wrapping it around the blond’s eyes and tying it behind his head. “Stop studying me,” he hissed into his ear. “Stop seeing everything.”

“Never.” Steve closed his eyes behind the silk fabric and let his other senses take over, inhaling the cleanliness of his cologne, reaching to feel the fabric over his forearms. He moved his hands slowly down his body and turned him around, pulling his back to Steve’s chest. “This better?”

His quiet huff wasn’t for the blond’s benefit; it was a sound of genuine frustration. “Steve,” he murmured, leaning back. “You’re making me crazy.”

Steve gripped his waist, pulling him back against him so he could feel the hard line of the blond’s cock against his ass. “At least some things never change.”

Steve blinked up to the flight attendant, who bent low to catch his eye and had obviously just said something.

“I’m sorry?” Steve asked.

“Would you like a beverage with your meal?”

“Ah, yes,” he said, pulling his brain from the memory of Bucky’s body, tight and coiled around him as he’d fucked him over the desk. “Just some Grey Goose and a cup of ice, please.”

“And for lunch? We have filet mignon or a cheese and olive plate.”

He ordered the latter and glanced out the window. From thirty thousand feet up, he could be anywhere. But he had the distinct feeling he was headed back in time. He hadn’t been back to France since his trip with Bucky when Steve had proposed and then spent weeks there. 

Thanksgiving had been a revelation in part because, before Bucky, Steve would have also said yes to Thor’s demand without even a thought. The younger man was so similar to him in so many ways, it was actually a little frightening.

Steve smiled as he thought back to his mother’s advice:

“Find a person who will be your equal in every way. Don’t let yourself fall for someone who’ll put your world before theirs. Fall for the powerhouse who lives as fearlessly as you do. Find the person who makes you want to be a better man.”

Well, Steve had found that person. Now all he had to do was wait for him to get here, so he could make sure he knew.

The path leading to their borrowed villa was covered in small, smooth stones. They were brown and uniform in size, and although they were clearly selected for their appearance and how well they fit the landscaping, it was refreshingly obvious that the grounds were meant to be enjoyed, not treated as a precious museum piece. Flower beds and urns lined both sides of the path, each spilling over with bright, colorful blossoms. There were trees everywhere, and off in the distance was a little seating area, screened from the rest of the yard by a wall of blooming vines.

Truly, Steve had never seen a more beautiful country home. The house was a soft red, the color of faded clay, and weathered to an absolutely gorgeous effect. White shutters framed the tall windows on the first and second floors, and more vibrant flowers lined beds against the doors. The perfume in the air was a mixture of ocean and peony.

Bougainvillea crawled up a trellis and framed the French provincial-inspired narrow double doorway. The top step was cracked but swept clean, and a simple, soft green mat lay atop the sun-bleached concrete.

The blond turned, looking behind himself at the yard. In the far corner and beneath several fig trees, a long table was covered in a brilliant orange tablecloth, the tabletop decorated simply with a narrow line of tiny blue bottles of different shapes and sizes. Clean white plates were spaced at even intervals, waiting for a dinner party to appear. A green lawn stretched to where he stood on the narrow porch, broken only by the occasional inground planter bursting with purple, yellow, and pink flowers.

Steve pulled the key from his pocket and entered the house. From the outside, it was clearly large, but it almost seemed to expand like an optical illusion inside.

He knew this house in the Provence region was large, but he didn’t realize there were so many fucking rooms. Just from the front door, he could see at least a dozen doorways connecting off the main hall, and doubtless, there were countless other rooms upstairs and out of sight.

On the shelf were three handmade santons, the small nativity figurines traditionally made by artists in Provence. All were obviously made by the same artist who made the giant urn on the table, and the rest of the art here.

The blues and greens of the platter mounted over the mantel caught the late afternoon sun and redirected the light, casting the wall behind it in a soft blue glow. With the wind blowing through the trees outside and the sunlight winking in and out of shadows, the effect was a bit like watching the surface of the ocean move in the wind. Combined with the crisp white furniture and otherwise simple decorating in the sitting room, it immediately made Steve feel calmer. The world of RMG and Odinson, of work and stress and the constant buzzing of his phone, felt a million miles away.

Unfortunately, so did Bucky.

As if he could hear Steve’s thoughts from where he sat on a plane headed over the Atlantic, his phone buzzed in his pocket and the brunet’s unique text chime rang out in the silent room.

Pulling the phone from his pocket, Steve glanced down and read the message:   
‘Mechanic strike. All flights canceled. I’m stuck in New York.’


	7. Realization

“What do you mean grounded?” Bucky said, gaping at the woman on the other side of the counter. She was about his age, with freckled cheeks and strawberry-blond hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail. She also looked like she was two seconds from strangling Bucky and every other person in the international terminal at LaGuardia.

“Unfortunately we’ve just been informed of a mechanic union strike,” she said flatly. “All Provence Airlines flights in and out of the airport have been canceled. We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience.”

Well, she didn’t sound very sorry. Bucky continued to stare, blinking rapidly as her words sunk in. “Excuse me, what?”

She arranged her features into a tight, practiced smile. “All flights have been canceled due to the strike.” He glanced over her shoulder to the Provence Airlines departure and arrival screens. Sure enough, CANCELED was emblazoned across each line.

“You’re telling me nothing is coming in or out. Correct?”

“Sir, as I told you, there are no Provence Airlines flights taking off or landing. You can check with the other airlines to see if they can accommodate you. There’s nothing else I can do.”

The brunet groaned, letting his forehead fall to the counter. Steve was waiting for him, probably sitting outside in the sun at this very moment, laptop open and working like the overachieving loser he was. God, he turns Bucky on.

“This can’t be happening,” Bucky said, straightening and giving the attendant the most pleading expression he could muster. “The sweetest jackass in the world is waiting for me in France and I can’t screw this up!”

“Mkaaaay,” she said clearing her throat and straightening a stack of papers.

He was doomed. “How long?” he asked.

“There’s no way to tell. Obviously they’ll try and resolve the issue as soon as possible, but it could be one day, it could be more.”

Well, that was helpful.

With a dramatic sigh and a few muffled swear words, Bucky dragged himself from the counter, in search of a quiet corner to call his assistant. Oh, and to text Steve. This was not going to go over well.

The phone rang within seconds.

Bucky maneuvered through the crowd, through the throngs of stranded passengers taking up virtually every flat surface in the Provence Airlines terminal, and stopped at a tiny alcove near the restrooms.

“Hi.”

“What the fuck do you mean ‘stuck in New York’?!” he shouted.

The brunet winced, pulling the phone from his ear before taking a much-needed calming breath.

“It means exactly what you think it means. We’ve been grounded, no flights in or out. I’m having a few people check with Delta and a few other airlines, but I’m sure everyone else has already done that, too.”

“This is unacceptable!” he roared. “Do they know who you are? Let me talk to someone.”

I laughed. “Nobody here knows or cares who I am. Or you for that matter.”

He was silent for a moment, long enough that the younger man actually looked to see if he’d dropped the call. He hadn’t. The sound of birds singing filled the line, a wind chime off in the distance. When he finally did speak, it was in that low, steady voice he’d become so accustomed to. The one that still sent goosebumps along Bucky’s skin. The one he used when he meant business.

“Tell them to get your ass on a plane,” he said, enunciating every word.

“Everything is overbooked on every plane, Steve. What the hell do you want me to do? Catch a ride on a boat? Use a portkey? Simmer down, I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

He groaned, and the brunet could tell the moment he realized he couldn’t argue or charm his way out of this. “But when?”

“I don’t know, babe. Tomorrow, maybe? The next day? Soon, I promise.”

With a resigned sigh, he asked, “So what now?” Bucky heard the sound of a door opening and closing, the tinkle of soft music in the background.

“We wait.” He sighed. “I’ll get out of here, maybe get some work done. And then I promise, the first available flight out of here? I’m on it. Even if I have to take out a few businessmen with my fist—I’ll get there.”

“You bet your ass you will,” Steve said.

Bucky shook his head to clear it from the sound of his commanding voice. “So tell me about the house. Is it as gorgeous as I imagine?”

“Better. I mean, your company would obviously improve it, but damn.”

“Well, try and enjoy it. Sit in the sun, swim, read something trashy. Walk around barefoot.”

“Walk around barefoot? That’s an unusual request, even for you.”

“Humor me.”

“Yes, sir.”

The brunet grinned. “Damn, I think I like this side of you. Pretty sexy when you take orders, Rogers.”

He laughed softly into the phone. “Oh, and Bucky?”

“Hmm?”

“I hope you didn’t pack any underwear. You won’t be needing those.”

The younger man spent the rest of the day at the airport, praying for a miracle or a flight to France. He got neither.

It took hours to locate his luggage, so by the time he finally walked through the door of his apartment, Bucky was ready to pass out. With the time difference, it was too late, or too early, to call Steve, so he’d sent him a short text while he ran himself a bath and grabbed a bottle of wine, from the kitchen.

He’d just climbed into the large tub—wineglass balanced precariously on the edge—when his phone rang. His hand fumbled around on the tile floor until he found it, and a smile filled him when the blond’s face lit up the screen.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Bucky said.

“Bed’s too big.”

He smiled at his sleepy voice. This was the Steve who would roll over in the middle of the night, limbs warm and heavy, sweet words mumbled into the brunet’s skin. He’d always been so much better at all of this than the younger man had, even from the beginning.

“What are you doing?” he asked, bringing Bucky’s attention back to the phone.

“Bubble bath,” he said, and grinned at the sound of his groan on the other end of the line.

“No fair.”

“What about you?”

“Just going over some paperwork.”

“Did you find my note?

“Note?”

“I left you something.”

“You did?”

“Mm-hmm. Check your laptop bag.”

Bucky heard the creak of leather as he stood, the sound of feet padding across a tile floor followed by laughter. “Bucky,” he said, laughing harder now. “It looks like someone slipped a ransom note in here.”

“Very funny.”

“‘Three observations about today: I didn’t get everything done on my to-do list, the salad you made me for lunch was delicious, and, most importantly, I love you,’?” he read, and then fell silent as he read the rest of the note to himself. When he finished, he grumbled, “I...fuck. It makes me insane that you aren’t here.”

Bucky closed his eyes. “The universe is conspiring against us.”

“You know, there’s a part of me that wants to say none of this would have happened if you weren’t so stubborn, and would have just come with me in the first place.” The younger man started to protest. “But,” he said, continuing, “your determination is one of the things I love most about you. You never settle. You’d never expect someone to do a job you wouldn’t do yourself. And you wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with if you changed that. It’s exactly what I would have done. As usual. And also a little creepy to realize how alike we are.”

Bucky sat up in the cooling water, his awareness and weight of the words striking him. “Thank you, Steve. That means a lot to me.”

“Well, I meant it. And you can show me your appreciation when you get that hot little ass to France. Deal?”

He rolled his eyes. “Deal.”

Bucky didn’t get to France the next day. Or the day after that. And by day three he was actually trying to remember why hitching a ride on a boat had seemed like such a bad idea in the first place.

It’s possible he called Steve more in those three days than in the entirety of their relationship, but it wasn’t enough and did nothing to ease the hollow ache that had taken up permanent residence inside his chest.

He kept himself busy, but there was no denying how alone and almost homesick he felt. He wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened, but at some point, Steve had become almost like a home for him. As in it. The One.

And it was fucking terrifying.

He’d come to this realization while out for a walk. His assistant had called, saying she’d been able to get him on an Air France flight later that night. Bucky’s first thought had been of the blond, and how he couldn’t wait to tell him he was on his way. He’d nearly sprinted back to his apartment.

But then he’d stopped, heart racing and lungs on fire. When had this happened, when had Steve become his everything? And Bucky wondered, was it possible he was trying to tell the brunet he felt the same way? He packed in a daze, throwing clothes aimlessly into his bag and collecting his things around the apartment. He thought back on how much Steve had changed in the last year. The quiet moments at night, the way he looked at the younger man sometimes as if he were the only person on the planet. He wanted to be with Steve—always. And not just in the same apartment or bed, but for good.

It was then that he was struck by an idea so crazy, so insane, that he literally burst out laughing. He’d never been the type of person to sit back and wait for the things he wanted to appear, so why should this be any different? And that was it.

Steve Rogers had no idea what was about to hit him.


	8. Yes

As impossible as it seemed, Steve was bored out of his fucking mind in this beautiful, enormous French villa. The place required no cleaning or handyman work, his VPN connection was so slow he couldn’t get on the RMG server to conduct actual business, and—perhaps most strangely—he felt like there were certain things he shouldn’t do until Bucky got here.

It felt wrong to dive into the infinity pool knowing the brunet was still in New York. He didn’t want to walk through the vineyards bordering the house, because it seemed like something they should discover at the same time. The housekeeper had put out some bottles of wine for them to enjoy, but surely only a giant asshole would drink them alone. Steve’s claim to this house was Bucky’s, too. He’d still only opened one bedroom door, and slept there, not wanting to go through our options until he’d arrived. Together they would pick out where they would spend their nights.

Of course, if he said any of this to Bucky he would laugh at Steve and tell him he was being dramatic. But that’s why he wanted the brunet here. Something monumental happened to him the other day when he used the bat signal, and that sense of urgency hadn’t diminished, and probably wouldn’t until the younger man was here and had heard what he had to say.

The blond walked through the gardens, stared out at the ocean in the distance, and checked his phone again, reading Bucky’s most recent text for the hundredth time:

‘Looks like Air France might have an open seat.’

Bucky sent this one three hours ago. Although it seemed promising, his previous three texts had been similar, and ultimately he’d been bumped from those flights. Even if he had left three hours ago, he wouldn’t make it to Marseille until tomorrow morning, at best.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a small figure emerge from the back of the house and place a platter of food on the table closest to the pool. Another peek at the clock on his phone told him that he’d managed to kill a few hours, and it was finally time for lunch. The house had come with a cook, a fifty-something woman named Dominique, who baked bread every morning, and, so far, served some variety of fish, fresh garden greens, and figs at lunch. Dessert was handmade macarons or tiny cookies with jam thumbprints. If Bucky didn’t get here soon, Dominique would have to roll him to the door to greet his boyfriend.

Beside his plate was a large glass of wine, and when he looked over at Dominique, she’d stopped at the threshold of the back door, pointed to the wine, and said, “Le boire. Vous vous ennuyez, et solitaire.”

Well, shit. He was bored, and he was lonely. One glass of wine couldn’t hurt. He wasn’t celebrating—he was surviving, right? He thanked Dominique for lunch, and sat down at the table, trying to ignore the perfect breeze, the perfect temperature, the sound of the ocean not even a half-mile in the distance, the feel of the warm tile beneath his bare feet. He wouldn’t enjoy a single second until Bucky was here.

Steve, you are one pathetic navel-gazer.

As usual, the fish was incredible, and the salad with tiny tart onions and little cubes of a sharp, white cheese packed so much flavor that before he knew it, his wineglass was empty and Dominique was at his side, quietly refilling it.

Steve began to stop her, telling her he needed no more wine. 

She winked at him. “Puis l’ignorer.”

Then ignore it.

The wine had left his limbs warm and heavy, his head full of rambling thoughts that seemed to have no reason. How insane would it have been to know Bucky in his early twenties? They would have torn this place up and probably lasted only a weekend. Isn’t it amazing how you meet the person you’re meant to meet when you’re supposed to meet them?

Steve fumbled with his phone and texted Bucky: ‘I’m so glad we met when we did. Even if you were an enormous pain in my ass you’re still the best thing that ever happened to me.’

He stared intently at his phone, looking for an indication that Bucky was replying, but nothing. Had his phone died? Or was he asleep back at home? Could he text on the airline? He did the mental calculation, knowing he was six hours? Seven hours behind..? No, too complicated for his drunken brain. He smiled at Dominique as she poured him another glass of wine, and he texted Bucky again: ‘Not drinking all of the wine but what we have is delicious! I promise to save some for you.’

Steve stood, tripping over...something. He frowned down at the lawn and wondered if he’d stepped on a small animal. Discarding the thought, he walked into the garden, stretching his arms and letting out a long, happy sigh. He felt relaxed for the first time since he’d last fucked Bucky, which was about a zillion years ago. With a full stomach and a bit of wine in him, he realized he hadn’t taken the time to plan for Bucky’s arrival at all. They had some things to get out of the way first. They had some talking to do, some planning.

Would he lead him to the garden, pull him down onto the lawn with him, and make him listen? Or wait for a quiet moment over dinner and then go to the brunet, guiding him out of the chair and close to him? He knew what he wanted to say—he’d gone over the words a million times in his head on the flights here—but he didn’t know when he would say it.

Best to let him be here a few days before dropping the hammer.

The blond closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and tilted his head up to the sky. He let himself enjoy it for just a beat. The weather was spectacular. The last time he’d been outside in the sun with Bucky was at a barbecue the previous weekend, and it had only been marginally warm. After a day in the sun and wind, they’d gone home and had some of the laziest, quietest sex he could remember.

He opened his eyes and immediately clapped a hand over his face in the bright sun. “Ow. Fuck.”

Dominique appeared several yards away and pointed to the front gate. “Allez,” she said, telling him. “Se promener. Vous êtes ivre.” Basically pointing out the obvious that he was drunk.

He laughed. Hell yes, he was tipsy. “Because you poured me an entire bottle.” He thinks that’s what he said slurringly.

With a smile, she lifted her chin. “Allez chercher des fleurs dans la rue. Demandez Mathilde.”

This was good. He had a task. Find some flowers. Ask for Mathilde. He bent to tie his shoe and headed out of the property, toward town. Dominique was a wily one, getting him drunk and then sending him off on errands so he wasn’t moping around the house all day. She and Bucky would get along swimmingly.

Not a half-mile down the road, there was a small storefront with flowers spilling out of every conceivable container: vases and baskets, boxes and urns. Over the door was a small sign written in a looping script that said simply, MATHILDE.

Bingo.

A bell rang as he entered, and a young blond woman stepped from the back into the small main room of the store.

Greeting him in French, she quickly gave him a once-over and then asked, “You’re the American?”

“I am indeed.”

She raised her brows flirtatiously. She was beautiful, no doubt, but her lingering eye contact and sexy smile made him a touch uneasy.

And then it hit him: Dominique knew he was bored and lonely, but she probably had no idea that he was waiting for Bucky’s arrival. She’d filled him with wine and then sent him to the hot young single woman down the street.

Oh dear God.

Mathilde moved a little closer, adjusting some flowers in a tall, slim vase. “Dominique said you were staying down the road.”

“Yes, I am”

Looking away from her flowers, she asked, “Are you here for flowers? Or do you think perhaps Dominique sent you for something else?”

“My boyfriend is coming tomorrow he was stuck in New York and then they had a strike and now he’s coming,” he blurted out in one steady, awkward word-flood.

“So you’re here for flowers, then.” Mathilde paused, looking around the store. “What a lucky man he is. You are very handsome.” Her eyes slid back to me. “Perhaps you’ll be sober by then?”

Steve frowned. Straightening, he muttered, “I’m not that tipsy.”

“No?” Her eyebrows lifted and an amused smile spread across her face. She moved back through the store, collecting an assortment of flowers as she walked. “You are charming anyway. The wine just makes you less inhibited. I bet normally you button up your shirts and frown at people who will walk too slowly in front of you.”

The blond’s frown deepened. That did sound a little like him. “I take my work seriously but I’m not like that...all the time.”

She smiled, tying some twine around the flowers. Mathilde handed him the bouquet and winked. “You’re not at work here. Keep your shirt unbuttoned. And don’t sober up for your lover. There are nine beds in that house.”

The front door was open. Had Dominique left and not closed it behind her? Panic seized him. What if something had happened when he was in town? What if the house had been ransacked? Despite Mathilde’s advice, he sobered instantly.

But it hadn’t been ransacked. It was exactly as he left it, with just a bit more wind blowing through the open door. Yet...he hadn’t come out this way; he’d walked from the backyard to the front gardens.

Down the hall, he heard water running, and he called out to Dominique, “Hello?”

As he neared the closest bedroom off the hall, he realized that what he’d heard was a shower. And just inside the door were suitcases.

Bucky’s suitcases.

Steve could have barreled in there and scared the ever-loving shit out of him. He had, after all, been stupid enough to leave the front door open enough for it to blow wide in the wind, and then climbed in the shower. He clenched his jaw and fists as he imagined what might have happened if someone else had decided to walk into the house instead of him.

Fuck. Steve hadn’t seen him in days and he already wanted to strangle and then kiss the hell out of the brunet. He felt a smile pull at his mouth. This was them. It was such a familiar battle of love and frustration, desire, and exasperation. He would push every button Bucky had, and then uncover new ones he didn’t even know he had, and push those.

As he moved closer, peeking around the doorway to where he stood, he was greeted by the sight of Bucky with dark wet hair flowing down his neck and the sight of his naked back. 

Part of him wanted to climb in and wash the younger man and kiss every inch of his body as he worshipped him. Another part of him wanted to climb in and make good on the promise to take him from behind, slowly and carefully. But an even larger part of him relished playing the voyeur. Bucky still didn’t know the blond was there, and seeing him like this—thinking he was alone, maybe even thinking about Steve?—was like a cold glass of water on a scorching day. He would never get tired of watching him in any setting. And naked, wet, and in the shower wasn’t too far from the top scenario on the list.

He turned to clear the conditioner from his hair, and that’s when he saw Steve. A smile exploded across his face and in that moment Steve almost shattered the glass shower door to get to him.

“How long have you been standing there?”

Steve shrugged, looking down the length of his body.

“Such a creeper.”

“Still a creeper, you mean.” He moved a little closer, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wall. “When did you get here, you sneak?”

“About a half-hour ago.”

“I thought you just caught a plane in the States? Did you go by portkey after all?”

He laughed, tilting his head back under the showerhead for one final rinse, before turning off the water. “I caught the first one I told you about. I thought it would be fun to mislead and surprise you. I think I was hoping you’d come home to find me in the shower.”

“I’ll admit it’s pretty fucking convenient because I’m ready to be naked myself.”

Bucky pushed open the door and came directly to him. “I wanted that pretty mouth on me as soon as I heard you were flirting with the flower girl.”

Steve scowled. “Oh please.” And then he paused. “How did you know about that?”

He smiled. “Dominique speaks very good English when she wants to. Said she grew tired of your moping and sent you down there because you’re so cute when you’re annoyed. I agreed.”

“She—what?”

“I’m glad you didn’t decide to bring Mathilde back with you, though. That could have been awkward.”

“Or it could have been awesome,” he teased, pulling the younger man against him and wrapping a towel from the rack around his shoulders. He felt the water from his chest soak into his clothes.

He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.

Steve bent, brushed his lips over his. “Hey, sweetheart.”

“Hey,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around the blond. “Have you ever had a threesome?” he asked, leaning back and running him hands up under his shirt as he worked to dry him off. “I can’t believe I haven’t ever asked you that.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. Answer my question.”

Steve shivered. “Yes.”

His hands were cold as they down his torso. “More than two at a time?”

Shaking his head, he bent to run his nose along the brunet’s sharp jaw. He smelled like home, like his Bucky: his own mild citrus scent and the natural smell of his skin. “Weren’t you saying something about wanting my mouth on you?”

“Specifically between my legs,” he instructed.

“I assumed.” He bent, scooped him up, and carried him to the bed.

When he put him down on the edge, Bucky sat up, leaning back on his hands behind himself and letting his knees fall apart. He looked up at the blond, and whispered, “Take your clothes off.”

Holy Christ this man was going to kill him with views like that. He kicked his shoes across the room, yanked off his socks, and reached behind him to pull his shirt over his head. Giving him a few seconds to reacquaint himself with his bare chest, he palmed his stomach and gave him a smile. “See something you like?”

“Are they giving shows?” Bucky’s hand slipped over his thigh and between his legs. “I can do that.”

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Steve breathed, fumbling with his belt buckle and pulling the buttons of his jeans free in a single movement. He nearly fell over trying to get them off.

The younger man’s hand moved away, and then he reached both arms out for him. “On top,” he said quietly, apparently not wanting his mouth after all. “Over me, I want to feel your weight.”

It was perfect, like this, without pretense. They both wanted to make love before they did anything else: looking around, eating, catching up.

Steve made sure he had the necessary supplies before situating himself overtop of the younger man. His skin was cool, and Steve’s still felt flushed from the sun, his uphill walk back to the villa, and the thrill of seeing him here so unexpectedly. The contrast was astounding. Beneath him, Bucky was nothing but wet skin and tiny, quiet sounds. His fingers dug into his back, his teeth slid over his chin, his neck, his shoulder.

“I want you inside,” he whispered into a kiss.

“Not yet.”

Although Bucky let out a little growl of frustration, for a while he let him simply kiss him. Steve loved the way his lips felt on his tongue, the way his tongue felt against his lips. He was acutely aware of every point of contact between them: their chests and erections touching and moving against each other, his hands on his back, the tendons of his thighs pressing into his sides. When he wrapped his legs around the blond’s, his calves felt like a band of heat around him. Steve extracted himself slightly for just a moment to apply some lube to his fingers before reaching between their bodies to tease the brunet’s entrance.

Beneath him, Bucky arched and rocked, getting as much friction as he could without Steve pushing inside. Kisses would start tentative, maybe playful, and then grow into deep, ravenous, arching hunger before returning to slow and tasting. He pressed at the rim, teasing for a moment before slowly breaching him with his middle finger. He let Steve press his arms over his head, let him suck, and bite his nipples and chest almost to the point of pain. The brunet asked him what he wanted, what felt good, and whether he wanted his body or his mouth first. Bucky’s first instinct when they were naked was always to pleasure Steve.

This man amazed me. He’d lost perspective on who he used to be outside of their relationship. With him, he could be anything. Brave and afraid weren’t opposites. He could be sharp and tender, devious, and innocent. He wanted to be his everything.

“I love the way we kiss,” he whispered, the words coming out pressed against his lips.

“What do you mean?” Steve knew what he meant. He knew exactly what he meant; he simply wanted to hear him talk about how fucking perfect it all felt.

“I just love that we kiss the same, that you always seem to know exactly how I want it.”

“I want to be married,” Steve blurted. “I want you to marry me.”

Fuuuuuuuck.

And so Steve’s entire carefully constructed speech was thrown out the window. The antique ring was in a box in the dresser—nowhere near him—and his plan to kneel and do everything right just evaporated.

In the circle of his arms, Bucky grew very still. “What did you just say?”

He had completely botched the plan, but it was too late to turn back now.

“I know they have only been together for a little over a year,” he explained, quickly. “Maybe it’s too soon? I understand if it’s too soon. It’s just how you feel about the way we kiss? I feel that way about everything we do together. I love it. I love to be inside you, I love working with you, I love watching you work, I love fighting with you, and I love just sitting on the couch and laughing with you. I’m lost when I’m not with you, Bucky. I can’t think of anything, or anyone, who is more important to me, every second. And so for me, that means we’re already sort of married in my head. I guess I wanted to make it official somehow. Maybe I sound like an idiot?” He looked over at the brunet, feeling his heart try to jackhammer its way up to his throat. “I never expected to feel this way about someone.”

Bucky stared at him, eyes wide and lips parted as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Steve stood and ran over to the dresser, pulling the box from the drawer and carrying it over to him. When he opened the box and let Bucky see the antique gold band, he clapped a hand over his mouth.

“I want to be married,” Steve said again. His silence was unnerving, and fuck, He’d completely botched this with his rambling nonsense. “Married to you, I mean.”

The brunet’s eyes filled with tears and he held them, unblinking. “You. Are such. An ass.”

Well, that was unexpected. He knew it might be too soon, but an ass? Really? He narrowed his eyes. “A simple ‘It’s too soon’ would have sufficed, Bucky. Jesus. I lay his heart out on the—”

Bucky pushed off the bed and ran over to one of his bags, rummaging through it and pulling out a small blue fabric bag. He carried it back to him with the ribbon hooked over his long index finger and dangled the bag in Steve’s face.

He asks Bucky to marry him and he brings him a souvenir of some sort? What the fuck is that? “What the fuck is that?” he asked.

“You tell me, genius.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Barnes. It’s a bag. For all I know you have a granola bar in there.”

“It’s a ring, dummy. For you.”

Steve’s heart was pounding so hard and fast he half wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like. “A ring for me?”

Bucky pulled a small box out of the bag and showed it to him. It was a smooth gold band, almost exactly the same as the one Steve got for Bucky.

“You were going to propose to me?” Steve asked, still completely confused. 

“You totally stole my thunder.”

“So, is that a yes?” The blond asked, his bewilderment deepening. “You’ll marry me?”

“You tell me!” He yelled, but he was smiling.

“Technically you haven’t asked yet.”

“Goddamnit, Steve! You haven’t, either!”

“Will you marry me?” he asked, laughing.

“Will you marry me?”

With a growl, Steve took the box and dropped it on the floor, flipping him onto his back.

“Are you always going to be this impossible?”

Bucky nodded, eyes wide, lip caught between his teeth. Fuck. They could settle this later.

Steve reached between their bodies again, resuming where he left off and slipped a finger back inside him before adding a second alongside it, curling, scissoring, and pumping them slowly. 

“Take my cock.” He bent, pressed a kiss into the younger man’s neck, and groaned when he reached between them to grip him. “Guide it into you.” Steve curled one last time against his prostate before retracting his fingers. 

Bucky shifted his hips beneath him until Steve could feel himself at his entrance. He slid into him slowly, even though every tendon and muscle in his body wanted it rough and frenzied. He groaned, shivered on top of him, feeling himself sink inside.

Shifting his hips back and then forward, he felt the younger man’s arms wrap around his neck, his face press into his neck as Bucky rose to meet his movements. It took only two more shifts of his hips before they grew louder and more frantic.

“Give it to me,” Bucky whispered into his mouth, licking forward, asking. He lifted his leg, pressed it up to his side, and slid in deeper. The brunet’s eyes rolled closed for a beat and he felt like he was about to explode in him.

Bucky pressed his head back into the pillow, parted his lips to gasp, and Steve took the opportunity to slide his tongue into his mouth, to suck a little on his. “That okay?” The blond whispered, pressing into the skin of his hip with his fingertips. The younger man loved the edge of pain and pleasure, that razor-sharp line they’d discovered early on together. Bucky nodded and Steve moved faster, filling his head with the smell of him. He tasted his collarbones, his neck, bit a mark into his shoulder.

“Up here,” Bucky breathed, pulling him back up to his face. “Kiss me.”

So he did. Over and over until he was panting and squirming beneath Steve, urging him to move faster. He felt his abdomen tense and then his legs squeezed hard around the blond, his cries sharp in his ear as the brunet came between their bodies.

Clenching his jaw, Steve pushed his own release to the back of his mind, wanting more, and longer, and to feel Bucky climax again before he would even let himself drift toward orgasm.

His cries grew louder, and he gasped and tried to pull away but Steve knew that he could come again from the direct attention to his prostate and the friction his cock had between their stomachs. He knew he was sensitive but he could take more.

“Don’t pull away. You’re not done yet. Not even fucking close. Give me another.”

His hips relaxed in his hands; his grip tightened in his hair again.

“Oh.” It was just a breath of a sound. There was so much contained in that single, quiet gasp.

Steve pressed closer, holding his hips and tilting them with his movements. “That’s it.”

“Coming,” the brunet breathed. “I can’t—I can’t—”

His hips shook and he gripped him as hard as he dared. “Don’t you fucking stop.”

“Touch me,” he gasped and Steve knew what he wanted. The blond kissed his neck before sliding his hand between their bodies again to wrap around Bucky’s dick.

With a sharp cry, he came again, the coiled muscles beneath his skin tightening all around Steve’s cock. Taking a deep breath, the blond let his orgasm unravel down his back and tear through himself; light bursts exploded behind his closed eyes. He could barely hear the brunet’s hoarse cries over the pounding of blood in his ears as he buried his release deep inside of him.

“Yes yes yes yes...” Bucky chanted, delirious, before collapsing onto the pillow beneath him.

It felt like the walls rattled in the silence that followed. Everything in his head shook with need for him; it was disorienting.

“Yes,” he gasped one last time.

Steve held very, very still as awareness seeped back into his thoughts. “Yes?”

Then with Bucky’s limbs still trembling all around him, and breaths coming out in sharp little pants, he gave Steve a radiant smile. “Yes...I want to be married, too.”


End file.
